Russia will launch a football league for “friendly” Moscow-occupied and separatist territories in Ukraine and Georgia, a sporting official said Monday.

The league will consist of clubs from annexed Crimea, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhask People’s Republics and the Russian-held Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in southern Ukraine, as well as t

At least 300 soldiers from a single unit in Russia’s North Caucasus refused deployment to Ukraine in the first month of the war, The Moscow Times’ Russian service hasreported.

The men from the republic of Dagestan were deployed in the pro-Russian separatist region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, according to activists cited by MT Russian on Monday.

Armenia will withdraw all troops from the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region – over which it has fought two wars with arch-foe Azerbaijan – by September, officials said Tuesday.  

Six weeks of fighting between the Caucasus neighbors in autumn 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire. 

Under the deal, Armenia

Russian world number 12 Daria Kasatkina criticized her country's attitude toward homosexuality in a video published on Monday as she announced she was a lesbian.

The 25-year-old's comments come after Russian deputies proposed on Monday a new law which would ban information on all non-traditional sexual relationships in the public sphere.

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