Lieutenant General Sergey Kudryashov has been appointed Commanding Officer of the Border Guard Service in Murmansk Oblast. Increased focus on the coast guard and the fight against fish poachers are amongst his priorities, he says.
The Northern Fleet Udaloy-class destroyer “Vitse-admiral Kulakov” has started sea trials in the Baltic Sea, after being in overhaul for nearly 20 years.
The level of freedom in Russia dropped in 2009, the Freedom House organization states in its annual world freedom index. The country is ranked among the “not free” countries and with a continuing negative trend.
While the numbers of visas to Norway issued in Moscow and St. Petersburg goes down, there was an increase in visas issued from The Norwegian General Consulate in Murmansk last year by 8 percent compared with 2008.
A Norwegian-Russian agreement on visa-free travel for the two countries’ border zone inhabitants could be ready can be a reality within 2010 says Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
-We have achieved what we set out to achieve, Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says in his summing up his country’s six-month presidency of the EU Council.
All the six Finnish provinces are becoming history along with the posts of provincial governors. They are replaced by six Regional Administrative Agencies, as well as 15 Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment.
