Putin’s appeal to the Russians

1 Russia

The Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation. He announced the extension of the non-working days in Russia, due to the new coronavirus, until the end of the month. Additional decisions could be made in the regions of Russia on their own, depending on their situation with the coronavirus. A reduction of the non-working period was announced as well. The President underlined that the wages still remain during this non-working period.

2 Syria

The head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, reported a shelling of two Syrian settlements — Serakib in Idlib, and Kharab-e-Sheikh in Latakia, by the terrorist organizations ‘Jabhat al-Nusra’ and ‘The Islamic party of Turkestan». Oleg Zhuravlev also said that a coordinated patrol of the Russian and Turkish military took place in Aleppo province. Earlier the SANA news agency reported that on Wednesday night «the armed opposition fired several artillery shells at the town of Sarakib».

3. Syria

The Syrian news agency SANA reported that the Syrian authorities «applied a regime of complete isolation of the city of Minin, located near Damascus, due to the death of a local woman, infected with the new coronavirus». This was stated by the Syrian Ministry of Health. It was underlined that these measures were taken due to the fact that «the members of the family of the deceased woman did not adhere to the self-isolation measures». The Syrian Ministry of Health indicated that the decision to isolate the city was made in order to «preserve the health of citizens, and prevent the spread of the coronavirus outside of a single settlement.»

4 Afghanistan

The Afghan TV channel ‘Tolo News’ reported that on Thursday, 2nd of April, the first exchange of the imprisoned Taliban members for the Afghan soldiers, captured by the Taliban, will take place. It was reported that 100 Taliban members are planned to be released from prisons. At the same time — the Taliban promised to hand over to the Afghan authorities 20 servicemen, captured by the Taliban. An agreement was reached on Wednesday, during the talks that took place in Kabul. This was announced by the official representative of the National Security Council of Afghanistan, Javid Faisal.

5 Venezuela — the USA

Venezuela is ready to cooperate with the USA in their fight against the drug traffic — the Foreign Ministry of Venezuela announced. The Venezuelan authorities also denounced Washington for using this anti-drug operation to attack Caracas. Earlier Donald Trump announced that Washington, together with 22 countries, is launching a large-scale drug control operation in the Western Hemisphere. The US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper underlined that the operation will be directed against Venezuela as well.

6 China — the USA

Hua Chunyin, the spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, called the statements of the US officials that the Chinese authorities tried to hide the real scale of the epidemic and the real number of victims to be «false and immoral». “Many US officials want to shift the responsibility” — she explained. Earlier ‘Bloomberg’ reported that the US intelligence agencies have information about the attempts of the Chinese authorities to hide the information about the outbreak of pneumonia. The US intelligence agencies believe that Beijing «concealed the scale of the outbreak of the new coronavirus», and presented the situation as if these numbers are lower than they actually are. Constantine Reztsov, specially for ANNA NEWS.