RIA Novosti

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BELGRADE - The refusal of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to give comments to the Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya amid restrictions to media freedom in the European Union means that the organization does not really seek to protect journalists, Sputnik news agency's Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan told Sputnik on Wednesday.

BELGRADE - The European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution on countering Russian media outlets, such as the Sputnik news agency and the RT broadcaster. As many as 304 parliamentarians voted in favor the document, 179 voted against and 208 abstained.

As many as 691 officials took part in the vote, meaning less than half supported the resolution.

At its next plenary session, the European Parliament will discuss the resolution with a call to the European Union to stop the negotiations with Turkey on full membership of the EU due to the latest actions of the authorities in Turkey.

"The draft resolution will be discussed on November 22, while voting will take place on November 24," related an EP source to RIA-Novosti agency.

Russian's Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev has been arrested on suspicions of extortion and threats to a representative of state-owned company Rosneft, Russian media report.

Ulyukayev has become the highest-profile official to be detained in Russian since 1991, with no minister having been placed under arrest in the country's post-Soviet history.

BELGRADE - Moscow is considering plans to return to Cuba and Vietnam where it had military bases in the past, Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Nikolay Pankov said on Friday, according to RIA news agency.

"We are working on this," Pankov said, while declining to elaborate.

BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic will visit Russia to open the country's honorary consulate in St. Petersburg on October 12, a source in the Serbian Foreign Ministry told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

"A Serbian honorary consulate will be opened in St. Petersburg on October 12. Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic will open the consulate," the source said.

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday expressed hope that people who devote significant attention to the development of Russia-Serbia relations will be given a worthy place in the new Serbian government, irrespective of its composition, the RIA Novosti agency reported.

The number of Russian tourists visiting Bulgaria in 2016 is expected to increase by 30% compared with last year, a Bulgarian diplomatic official has said.

"A bigger increase is also possible," RIA Novosti quoted tourism attaché at Bulgaria's embassy in Moscow, Katya Zhekova, as saying at a news conference held at a regional tourism conference in Samara.

A mountaineer who died while climbing up Elbrus, in the Northern Caucasus, is a Bulgarian national, Russia's RIA Novosti agency reports.

His body was found earlier on Thursday by a group of climbers, at a height of 4900 m (the peak itself is at an altitude of 5642 m).

As many as 12 rescuers arrived at the scene, taking the body down to hand it over to forensics.

Moscow does not accept the results of a British inquiry into the killing of spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Russia believes that Britain had violated the principle of the presumption of innocence, according to RIA Novosti.