Putin hails Russia's air power as new fighter goes on view

July 20, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian aircraft makers on Tuesday unveiled a prototype of a new fighter jet that features stealth capabilities and other advanced characteristics and will be offered to foreign buyers. Russian President Vladimir Putin inspected the prospective warplane displayed with much fanfare at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon, which opened Tuesday in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow.

Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi developed the new fighter under the LTS program, a Russian acronym for the Light Tactical Aircraft. Its makers said the prototype is set to make its maiden flight in 2023 and deliveries could start in 2026. They said the new design could be converted to an unpiloted version and a two-seat model.

The prospective warplane, marketed under the project name Checkmate, has one engine and is designed to be smaller and cheaper than Russia’s latest Su-57 two-engine stealth fighter, also built by Sukhoi. It can fly at a speed of 1.8-2 times the speed of sound, has a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and a payload of 7,400 kilograms (16,300 pounds), the jet's makers said.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov voiced hope that the new fighter could be sold to India, Vietnam and African nations, adding that foreign customers are expected to order at least 300 such aircraft. Borisov noted that one foreign customer he didn't name has already expressed a strong interest in the new jet.

The sales of warplanes have accounted for the bulk of Russian weapons exports, but the two-engine Su-30 and Su-35 fighters have faced growing competition in global markets. Industries and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said that the prospective fighter was being developed to compete with the U.S. F-35 Lightning II fighter that entered service in 2015, a new Chinese fighter, and other designs. “We must join other nations that sell such aircraft,” he said.

Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec state corporation that includes Sukhoi and other aircraft makers, said the new plane is expected to cost $25-30 million. He said that the Russian air force is also expected to place an order for the new fighter.

Russia's Sukhoi and MiG aircraft makers only have produced two-engine fighters since the 1980s. Some experts observed that it has placed Russia at disadvantage in some foreign markets where customers preferred cheaper one-engine aircraft.

Rostec said the new warplane belongs to the so-called fifth generation of fighter jets, a definition that assumes stealth characteristics and a capability to cruise at supersonic speed, among other advanced features.

The corporation noted that the new design includes artificial intelligence features to assist the pilot and other innovative technologies. It said the jet was designed to reduce service costs and to be easily adapted to varying customer needs.

Manturov noted that the new design would incorporate some components from the previous fighters to help reduce price. Rostec ran an aggressive advertising campaign in the days before the air show, publishing a picture of the new fighter hidden under a black tarpaulin with “Wanna see me naked?” written under it. It also posted a video featuring adulatory customers from India, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Vietnam and other countries, reflecting export hopes.

Plane spotters flocked to Zhukovsky last week to take pictures of the new plane as it was being taxied to a parking spot across the giant airfield which has served as the country’s top military aircraft test facility since Cold War times.

The Kremlin has made modernization of the country’s arsenals a key priority amid tensions with the West that followed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. It also has strongly encouraged the development of new passenger jets to compete with planes built by American aircraft maker Boeing and Europe's Airbus that currently account for the bulk of Russian carriers' fleets.

Russia's airliner programs have encountered delays amid Western sanctions that hampered imports of Western engines and other key components. But the country managed to produce a new engine for the new MS-21 passenger plane, which also was displayed at the show in Zhukovsky.

“What we saw in Zhukovsky today demonstrates that the Russian aviation has a big potential for development and our aircraft making industries continue to create new competitive aircraft designs,” Putin said in a speech at the show's opening.

EU members bordering Russia reject plan to meet with Putin

June 25, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries bordering Russia rejected a Franco-German plan to resume official meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with one leader likening the move to an attempt to talk a bear out of stealing honey.

In a statement in the early hours of Friday morning, EU leaders said only that they “will explore formats and conditionalities of dialogue with Russia.” There was no mention of any high-level meetings or plans for a summit with Putin.

The European Union is deeply divided in its approach to Moscow. Russia is the EU’s biggest natural gas supplier, and plays a key role in a series of international conflicts and issues linked to Europe's strategic interests, including the Iran nuclear deal, and conflicts in Syria and Libya.

European heavyweight Germany has strong economic interests there, notably the NordStream 2 undersea pipeline project, and a number of countries, including France, are reluctant to continue waging a sanctions battle with Russia, including over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The EU is concerned that Putin is turning increasingly authoritarian and wants to distance himself from the West. Both the 27-nation trading bloc and the NATO military alliance are struggling to bring Russia to the table. U.S. President Joe Biden’s meeting with Putin this month was a rare exception.

“We have to deal with Russia, but being very cautious about the real intentions of Putin’s regime,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels. “So far, we don’t see any radical change in the pattern of behavior of Russia.”

“If, without any positive changes in the behavior of Russia, we start to engage, it will send very uncertain and bad signals,” Nauseda said. “It seems to me like we try to engage a bear to keep a pot of honey safe.”

The other two Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia, are also deeply concerned about reaching out to Moscow when the Minsk agreements meant to bring peace to Ukraine, whose Crimean Peninsula Russia annexed in 2014, are still not being respected. Conflict still simmers in eastern Ukraine with Russia-backed separatists.

“Right now, if it pans out the way it’s proposed, Russia annexes Crimea, Russia wages war in Donbass, and Europe shrugs its shoulders and continues to try to speak a dialogue. The Kremlin does not understand this kind of politics,” said Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins.

His Estonian counterpart, Kaja Kallas, said that “what our intelligence (service) tells us is that sanctions work and the European Union has to be more patient.” But French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe cannot simply tackle its problems with Russia on a case-by-case basis, by continually imposing sanctions or other measures.

“We cannot continue without dialogue. We have to talk, including about our disagreements. It’s the only way to resolve them,” Macron said. “It’s a dialogue that’s necessary for the stability of the European continent, but demanding because we will not give up our interests and values.”

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers that “the events of recent months — not just in Germany — have clearly shown that it’s not enough if we react to the multitude of Russian provocations in an uncoordinated way.”

“Instead, we have to create mechanisms to respond in a common and unified way to provocations” to what she described as “hybrid attacks by Russia.” That includes outreach to countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and the western Balkans, but also engaging Russia and Putin directly.

The plan was welcomed in Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin supports the idea to restore “the mechanism of direct contacts between Brussels and Moscow.” “Putin has spoken about it many times,” Peskov said. “Both Brussels and Moscow really need this dialogue.”

Ukraine, in contrast, was not so keen about the EU outreach. “Initiatives to resume EU summits with Russia without seeing any progress from the Russian side will be a dangerous deviation from EU sanctions policy,” Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in Brussels.

In the end, the leaders agreed to underline “the need for a firm and coordinated response by the EU and its member states to any further malign, illegal and disruptive activity by Russia, making full use of all instruments at the EU’s disposal.”

Despite the Franco-German push for talks, they invited the EU's executive branch and top diplomat “to present options for additional restrictive measures, including economic sanctions.”

Sylvain Plazy in Brussels, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Frank Jordans in Berlin and Daria Litvinova in Moscow contributed to this report.

Russian upper house votes to exit from overflight treaty

June 02, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian parliament's upper house voted Wednesday to withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities following the U.S. exit from the treaty.

The vote comes after U.S. officials told Moscow last month that President Joe Biden's administration had decided not to reenter the Open Skies Treaty, which had allowed surveillance flights over military facilities before President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact.

As a presidential candidate, Biden had criticized Trump’s withdrawal as “short-sighted.” Moscow has signaled its readiness to reverse the withdrawal procedure and stay in the 1992 treaty if the United States returns to the agreement.

After the Russian upper house voted to leave the treaty, it would now come to Russian President Vladimir Putin for signing. If Putin endorses the exit, it would take effect in six months. Putin and Biden are to have a summit in Geneva on June 16. The meeting comes as Russia-U.S. ties have sunk to the lowest levels since the Cold War times after Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, the accusations of Moscow's interference in U.S. elections, hacking attacks and other irritants.

The Open Skies Treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accord’s more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each other’s territories to collect information about military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have been conducted under the treaty since it took effect in 2002, aimed at fostering transparency and allowing for the monitoring of arms control and other agreements.

Trump pulled out of the pact last year, arguing that Russian violations made it untenable for Washington to remain a party. Washington completed its withdrawal from the treaty in November. Moscow has deplored the U.S. withdrawal, warning that it will erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid heightened Russia-West tensions.

The European Union has urged the U.S. to reconsider its exit and called on Russia to stay in the pact and lift flight restrictions, notably over its westernmost Kaliningrad region, which lies between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland.

Russia has insisted the restrictions on observation flights it imposed in the past were permissible under the treaty and noted that the U.S. imposed more sweeping restrictions on observation flights over Alaska.

As a condition for staying in the pact after the U.S. pullout, Moscow has unsuccessfully pushed for guarantees from NATO allies that they wouldn’t hand over the data collected during their observation flights over Russia to the U.S.

Russian opposition activist sent to jail amid crackdown

June 02, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court on Wednesday sent a prominent opposition activist to jail pending a probe, as authorities continue to crack down on dissent ahead of September's parliamentary election. In the southern city of Krasnodar, a court ordered Andrei Pivovarov, the head of the Open Russia movement that has just disbanded itself, to be held for two months pending an investigation, rejecting the defense’s appeal against his arrest.

Last week, Open Russia’s leaders dissolved the group to protect its members from prosecution after Russian authorities designated it as an “undesirable” organization along with more than 30 others, using a 2015 law that made membership in such organizations a criminal offense.

Pivovarov rejected the charges and pointed out during the court hearing that the criminal probe against him was opened two days after Open Russia shut down. He was pulled off a Warsaw-bound plane at St. Petersburg’s airport just before takeoff late Monday and taken to Krasnodar, where authorities accused him of supporting a local election candidate last year on behalf of an “undesirable” organization.

On Wednesday, a court in Moscow is also set to consider investigators’ request to lock up Dmitry Gudkov, a former Russian lawmaker who has aspired to run again for a parliament seat. Gudkov was detained Tuesday on financial charges that he and his supporters allege were trumped up.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rejected suggestions of political motives for the investigations of Gudkov and Pivovarov, telling reporters that “the accusations filed by law enforcement agencies have no relation to politics.”

Open Russia was financed by Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who moved to London after spending 10 years in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging Putin’s rule.

Speaking to The Associated Press in a Zoom interview on Tuesday, Khodorkovsky said that the recent crackdown on dissent reflects the authorities’ concern about the waning popularity of the main Kremlin-directed party, United Russia.

“The authorities don't feel that confident about the results they can get in September,” Khodorkovsky told the AP. “That's why the Kremlin is trying to steamroll all potential political opponents.” Putin spoke to United Russia candidates in September's vote via a video call Wednesday, hailing the party's role in helping the population and businesses amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Putin’s most determined political foe, Alexei Navalny, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recuperating from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin — accusations that Russian officials dismiss. He was given a 2 1/2-year prison sentence in February for violating terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he denounced as politically motivated.

A court in the town of Petushki, in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, on Wednesday rejected Navalny's appeal asking to halt the hourly night-time checks he has been subjected to in his penal colony.

Speaking to the court in a video link from prison, Navalny charged that the checks “effectively amount to torture” and argued that he has done nothing that would warrant the authorities’ decision to designate him as a flight risk that has resulted in checks.

He went on a 24-day hunger strike in prison to protest the lack of medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs, ending it last month after getting the medical attention he demanded.

In remarks given to his lawyers and posted on his Instagram account Wednesday, Navalny denounced the criminal charges against Pivovarov and Gudkov as "a sham and a crime." “This disgusting deceitful government is also quite cowardly, and it's going to gobble people up one by one to scare all others,” he said, urging Russians not to be afraid of repression. “They live by our fear, don't feed them,” he added.

With Navalny in prison, prosecutors have asked a Moscow court to designate his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his network of regional offices as extremist groups. At the same time, a bill approved by the lower house of the Russian parliament bars members, donors and supporters of extremist groups from seeking public office — a measure that would keep Navalny’s associates from running for parliament in September.

Khodorkovsky argued that the Sept. 19 parliamentary election is important for Putin to cement his rule ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential election. The 68-year-old Putin, who has been in power for more than two decades, pushed through constitutional changes last year that would potentially allow him to hold onto power until 2036.

Harriet Morris in Moscow contributed to this report.

School shooting in Russia kills 9 people; suspect arrested

May 11, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — A gunman launched an attack on a school in the Russian city of Kazan that left at least nine people dead Tuesday — including seven youngsters — and sent students hiding under their desks or running out of the building.

At least 21 others were hospitalized, six in extremely grave condition, authorities said. The attacker, identified only as a 19-year-old, was arrested, officials said. They gave no immediate details on a motive.

But Russian media said the gunman was a former student at the school who called himself “a god” on his account on the messaging app Telegram and promised to “kill a large amount of biomass” on the morning of the shooting.

“I was in the classroom when a man with a firearm broke into our classroom and just started shooting,” said student Akhmat Khairulin. He said students hid under their desks at their teacher's direction, though one jumped out of a window.

Attacks on schools are rare in Russia, and President Vladimir Putin reacted by ordering the head of the country's National Guard to revise regulations on the types of weapons allowed for civilian use.

Four boys and three girls, all eighth-graders, died, as well as a teacher and another school employee, said Rustam Minnikhanov, governor of the Tatarstan republic, where Kazan is the capital. The teacher who died, Elvira Ignatyeva, had been an English instructor at the school for four years, thye state news agency Tass reported.

Footage released by Russian media showed students dressed in black and white running out of the building. Another video depicted shattered windows, a stream of smoke coming out of one, and the sound of gunfire. Dozens of ambulances lined up at the entrance.

Russian media said while some students were able to escape, others were trapped inside during the ordeal. “The terrorist has been arrested, 19 years old. A firearm is registered in his name. Other accomplices haven’t been established. An investigation is underway,” Minnikhanov said.

Authorities said the 21 hospitalized included 18 children. Authorities announced a day of mourning on Wednesday and canceled all classes in Kazan schools. Authorities tightened security at all schools in the city of about 1.2 million people, 430 miles (700 kilometers) east of Moscow.

The deadliest school attack in Russia took place in 2004 in the city of Beslan, when Islamic militants took more 1,000 people hostage for several days. The siege ended in gunfire and explosions, leaving 334 dead, more than half of them children.

In 2018, a teenager killed 20 people at his vocational school before killing himself in Kerch, a city in the Russian-annexed peninsula of Crimea. In the wake of that attack, Putin ordered authorities to tighten control over gun ownership. But most of the proposed legislative changes were turned down by the parliament or the government, the Kommersant newspaper reported.

Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram that the suspect in the Kazan attack received a permit for a shotgun less than two weeks ago and that the school had no security aside from a panic button. Authorities did not specify what kind of gun the attacker used.

Authorities in Tatarstan ordered checks on all gun owners in the region. Putin extended condolences to the families of the victims and ordered the government to give them all necessary assistance. Russian officials promised to pay families 1 million rubles (roughly $13,500) each and give 200,000 to 400,000 rubles ($2,700-$5,400) to the wounded.

The Kremlin sent a plane with doctors and medical equipment to Kazan, and the country's health and education ministers headed to the region.

Top Navalny associates detained ahead of protests in Russia

April 21, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Two close associates of Alexei Navalny were detained Wednesday ahead of protests planned to support the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, who has been on a hunger strike since March 31.

Navalny's team called for nationwide protests after reports about the politician's health deteriorating in prison. Russian authorities have stressed that the demonstrations were not authorized and warned against participating in them.

Vladimir Voronin, a lawyer for top Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol said on Twitter that people “in uniform” removed Sobol from a taxi near a Moscow metro station on Wednesday morning. Sobol was taken to a police precinct, he said.

Police also detained Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, who is currently under house arrest on charges related to January protests in support of the politician. Yarmysh was detained near the entrance of her apartment building when she went out during the one hour she is allowed to leave, her lawyer, Veronika Polyakova, said on Twitter.

She has been charged with organizing an unsanctioned meeting via the internet. In the Pacific port of Vladivostok, about 1,000 protesters marched through the city chanting “Russia without Putin” and smaller demonstrations took place in Far East cities including Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Yuzho-Sakhalinsk. The OVD-Info human rights organization that monitors political arrests said at least 10 people were detained at a protest in the city of Magadan.

The organization also reported that police searched the offices of Navalny's organization in Yekaterinbrug and detained a Navalny-affiliated journalist in Khabarovsk. In St. Petersburg, the State University of Aerospace Instrumentation posted a notice warning that students participating in unauthorized demonstrations could be expelled.

Navalny was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin. Russian officials have rejected the accusation. His arrest for an alleged violation of a suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction triggered protests that represented the biggest show of defiance in Russia in recent years.

Soon after, a court ordered Navalny to serve 2 1/2 years in prison for the embezzlement conviction, which the European Court of Human Rights deemed to be “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.” Navalny began the hunger strike to protest prison officials' refusal to let his doctors visit when he began experiencing severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs. The penitentiary service has said Navalny was getting all the medical help he needs.

Navalny’s physician, Dr. Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said Saturday that test results he received from Navalny’s family showed sharply elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys.

“Our patient could die at any moment,” he said in a Facebook post. On Sunday, the politician was transferred to a hospital in another prison and given a glucose drip. Prison officials rebuffed attempts by his doctors to visit him there.

In response to the news about Navalny’s health, his team called for more nationwide protests on Wednesday, the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to deliver his annual state of the nation address.

According to a website dedicated to the protests, demonstrations were planned in 165 Russian cities as of Wednesday morning. Russian authorities, meanwhile, escalated their crackdown on Navalny’s allies and supporters. The Moscow prosecutor’s office asking a court to brand Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his network of regional offices as extremist organizations. Human rights activists say such a move would paralyze the activities of the groups and expose their members and donors to prison sentences of up to 10 years.

Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story.

Putin warns of 'quick and tough' Russian response for foes

April 21, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sternly warned the West against encroaching further on Russia's security interests, saying Moscow's response will be “quick and tough” and make the culprits feel bitterly sorry for their action.

The warning during Putin's annual state-of-the-nation address came amid a massive Russian military buildup near Ukraine, where cease-fire violations in the seven-year conflict between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces have escalated in recent weeks. The United States and its allies have urged the Kremlin to pull the troops back.

“I hope that no one dares to cross the red line in respect to Russia, and we will determine where it is in each specific case,” Putin said. “Those who organize any provocations threatening our core security interests will regret their deeds more than they regretted anything for a long time.”

Moscow has rejected Ukrainian and Western concerns about the troop buildup, saying it doesn't threaten anyone and that Russia is free to deploy its forces on its territory. But the Kremlin also has warned Ukraine against trying to use force to retake control of the rebel-held east, saying Russia could be forced to intervene to protect civilians in the region.

“We really don’t want to burn the bridges,” Putin said. “But if some mistake our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intend to burn or even blow up those bridges themselves, Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, quick and tough.”

As Putin spoke, a wave of protests started rolling across Russia’s far east in support of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The politician, who is Putin’s most persistent critic and was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent last year, started a hunger strike three weeks ago to protest what he said was inadequate medical treatment and officials’ refusal to allow his doctor to visit him.

Navalny’s treatment and deteriorating condition has caused international outrage and prompted his allies to call the nationwide protests. Police detained several Navalny associates in Moscow and moved to disperse unauthorized demonstrations across Russia, arresting scores.

In his speech, Putin pointed to Russia’s moves to modernize its nuclear arsenal and said the military would continue to build more state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles and other new weapons. He added that the development of the nuclear-armed Poseidon underwater drone and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile is continuing successfully.

In an apparent reference to the U.S. and its allies, the Russian leader denounced those who impose “unlawful, politically motivated economic sanctions and crude attempts to enforce its will on others.” He said Russia has shown restraint and often refrained from responding to “openly boorish” actions by others.

The Biden administration last week imposed new sanctions on Russia for interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and for involvement in the SolarWind hack of federal agencies — activities Moscow has denied. The U.S. ordered 10 Russian diplomats expelled, targeted dozens of companies and individuals, and imposed new curbs on Russia’s ability to borrow money.

Russia retaliated by ordering 10 U.S. diplomats to leave, blacklisting eight current and former U.S. officials, and tightening requirements for U.S. Embassy operations. “Russia has its own interests, which we will defend in line with the international law,” Putin said during Wednesday's address. “If somebody refuses to understand this obvious thing, is reluctant to conduct a dialogue and chooses a selfish and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to defend its position.”

In an emotional outburst, Putin chastised the West for acquiring a defiant stance toward Russia. “Some countries have developed a nasty habit of bullying Russia for any reason or without any reason at all. It has become a new sport,” he said.

In an apparent reference to the U.S. allies, he compared them to Tabaqui, a cowardly golden jackal kowtowing to Shere Khan, the tiger in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book.” “They howl to please their lord,” he said.

Russia this week engaged in a tense tug-of-war with the Czech Republic, following Prague's move to expel 18 Russian diplomats over a massive Czech ammunition depot explosion in 2014. Moscow has dismissed the Czech accusations of its involvement in the blast as absurd and retaliated by expelling 20 Czech diplomats.

Putin also harshly criticized the West for failing to condemn what he described as a botched coup attempt and a failed plot to assassinate Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko, allegedly involving a blockade of the country’s capital, power cuts and cyberattacks. Belarusian and Russian security agencies arrested the alleged coup plotters in Moscow earlier this month.

“The practice of organizing coups and planning political assassinations of top officials goes over the top and crosses all boundaries,” Putin said, drawing parallels to plots against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the popular protests that led to the ouster of Ukraine's former Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.

Russia responded to Yanukovych's ouster by annexing Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and throwing its support to the separatists in the country's east. Since then, fighting there has killed more than 14,000 people and devastated the industrial heartland.

Putin dedicated most of his annual address to domestic issues, hailing the nation's response to the coronavirus pandemic. He said the quick development of three coronavirus vaccines underlined Russia's technological and industrial potential. He called for a quicker pace of immunizations, voicing hope the country could achieve collective immunity this fall.

He put forward incentives to help the economy recover from the pandemic and promised new social payments focusing on families with children.

Associated Press writer Daria Litvinova contributed.