Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt on Friday over the Vatican as a potential location for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, saying that the Holy See itself would find it uncomfortable to host two mainly Orthodox Christian nations.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said reviving the nation's birth rate is one of Russia's "top priorities."

MOSCOW, May 23. /TASS/. Russia will give an appropriate and harsh response to the massive attacks on its cities that Ukraine carried out with drones and Western-supplied missiles, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said.

Russia's Arctic LNG 2 plant, currently under U.S. sanctions, has shut down its first production train because reservoirs are full in the absence of tankers to load, a source close to the matter told Reuters on Friday.

Almost one third of Russia's total expenditures is classified and the word "secret" appears 39 times in the budget when it was adopted last December, the Russian news outlet RuNews24.ru reported.

Russian armed forces are creating a “security buffer zone” along the border between Russia and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

The Taliban administration is in advanced talks with Russia for banks from both sanctions-hit economies to settle trade transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars in their local currencies, Afghanistan's acting commerce minister said.

TASS/. Russia's experience of the special military operation is being closely studied by foreign political leadership and defense industry experts, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a government meeting on military-technical cooperation.