The Moscow Times: Russia on Monday confirmed 16,343 Covid-19 infections and 835 deaths.
The Moscow Times: Five global nuclear powers pledged Monday to prevent atomic weapons spreading and to avoid nuclear conflict, in a rare joint statement ahead of a review of a key nuclear treaty later this year. “We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented,” said permanent UN Security Council members China, France, Russia, the UK and United States, adding: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Meduza: American officials secured Vladislav Klyushin’s extradition from Switzerland last month on charges of insider trading, but journalists at Bloomberg say the Russian tech tycoon might also have access to documents relating to the Russian military’s operations abroad, including Moscow’s campaign to hack Democratic Party servers during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the attempted chemical poisoning assassination of former spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018. According to the U.S. indictment, Klyushin’s I.T. firm, M13, worked for the Russian presidency and federal government. Bloomberg’s sources described Klyushin as “the highest-level Kremlin insider handed to U.S. law enforcement in recent memory.”
RFE/RL: The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, will visit Ukraine this week in a sign of the bloc’s support for Kyiv as it faces a Russian military buildup near its border. The European Commission said on January 3 that Borrell will travel to Ukraine from January 4 to January 6, visiting the “contact line” where Russia-backed separatists battle Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine before meeting with officials in Kyiv.
