While eager to show a united front against Russia and Syria, G7 foreign ministers meeting in Italy again failed to reach an agreement over new sanctions against the two nations as a British plan to impose targeted sanctions on military personnel in Russia and Syria, supported by the US, was rejected by European allies.
"There is no consensus on additional new sanctions," Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said.
Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,
The Russian central bank opened its first overseas office in Beijing on March 14, marking a step forward in forging a Beijing-Moscow alliance to bypass the US dollar in the global monetary system, and to phase-in a gold-backed standard of trade.
According to the South China Morning Post the new office was part of agreements made between the two neighbours "to seek stronger economic ties" since the West brought in sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis and the oil-price slump hit the Russian economy.
With just one month to go until the French presidential election, President Vladimir Putin met the leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, in the Kremlin on Friday, and as Reuters summarized, "handed her a potential boost to her campaign to win next month's presidential election in France."
Putin told Le Pen Moscow reserved the right to meet any French politician it wanted and that she represented "quite a fast-growing element of European political forces."
Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Russia has warned Norway over consequences of joining NATO ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans. According to Russian ambassador to Oslo, Moscow will retaliate. Norway's possible accession to NATO's missile shield «will be a new factor that will be considered in our strategic planning as the emergence of an additional problem in the Arctic region», Teimuraz Ramishvili told the Norwegian state media network NRK.