Month: April 2013

Police in Kyrgyzstan have detained the editor-in-chief of the country’s largest Uzbek-language newspaper on suspicion of his involvement in deadly ethnic clashes in the country in 2010 that killed about 500 people.

Following the 2010 coup and toppling of president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, southern Kyrgyz regions became the scene of deadly inter-ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz people and the country’s Uzbek minority.

The violence left about 500 people dead, injured thousands and forced about 500,000 people from their homes.

A new website to promote the activity of a Syrian rebel group has been launched in the Russian language, thereby leading to concerns that Russian Islamists are involved in the Syrian civil war.

Fisyria.com is a standalone videofeed comprising four entries till April 2, the first posted March 25.

Most entries deal with Jaish al-Muhajireen wa Ansar (“Army of the Emigrants and Helpers”), a group that was created in March from a merger of several smaller rebel units.

Russia has officially opened the Barneo-2013 drifting base in the Arctic, the Russian Geographical Society said.

The society’s first vice president Artur Chilingarov was quoted as saying that the Russian national flag and that of the society were hoisted above the station Tuesday to mark the official beginning of its work.

The Barneo research station has been set up annually since 2002 on an ice floe at a latitude of some 89 degrees north, approximately 110 km from the North Pole.

All equipment, food and other necessary supplies were flown to the location by plane in March.

Ukrainian journalist Ankhar Kochneva, who was held captive by militants in Syria for five months before she escaped last month, has returned to the war-torn country.

Kochneva told RIA Novosti by phone that she had no plans “to change her place of residence on account of some bandits”.

She will live in a rented apartment in Damascus under constant armed guard, the journalist said, adding that she would not rule out the possibility of obtaining Syrian citizenship if it is offered to her.

Sales of vodka and other spirits in Russia dropped almost nine percent in February year-on-year to 113 million litres, a government report said.

The Federal Statistics Service (or Rosstat) said in a report that beer sales declined less than one percent in February compared to the same period last year, to some 730 million litres.

Wine sales dropped 4.5 percent year-on-year in the period to 73 million litres, following seven percent growth in January.

Overall, wine sales increased by five percent in the first two months of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012.

The US will need between five and seven Ground Based Interceptors (GBI) to intercept one Russian Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile, a Russian military expert has said.

“From my contacts with the director of the (US Department of Defense’s) Missile Defense Agency, I have learned that the Americans will need five to seven interceptors to engage one Topol-M missile,” said retired Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff at Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (1994-1996).

Russia wants play a role in keeping Afghanistan stable after the withdrawal of most NATO combat troops by maintaining government military hardware on Afghan soil, a senior military official said on Wednesday.

In a meeting with foreign military attaches in Moscow, Sergei Koshelev underscored that Russia is worried about threats to its security after the pullout of most foreign forces from Afghanistan, which borders ex-Soviet states in Central Asia.