From RFE/RL's News Desk:
Russia will use some money initially meant for pensions to maintain an anticrisis fund that could help companies hit by Western sanctions.
The United States and European Union have restricted Russian companies' access to capital markets in hopes of persuading the Kremlin to change its behavior in Ukraine.
Companies including state oil giant Rosneft have asked the government for help.
RIA Novosti news agency cited Finance Minister Anton Siluanov as saying on September 15 that a decision to stop transferring money to the pension fund would hand the budget an extra 309 billion rubles ($8.18 billion) in 2015.
He said some money initially destined for the pension fund and some left over from this year's budget would be used for an anticrisis fund that will contain at least 100 billion rubles ($2.65 billion).
"This...will allow us to help our companies," Siluanov was quoted as saying.
Gunfire was heard and smoke was seen rising from buildings in Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, amid renewed clashes on September 14. Sporadic fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists has continued in spite of a cease-fire agreement reached on September 5.
From our News Desk:
A pro-Kremlin legislator says Russia should ban Euronews over footage showing Ukrainian forces using an image depicting President Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler for target practice.
The newspaper "Izvestia" reports United Russia party lawmaker Mikhail Markelov has urged the state communications regulator to investigate what it says was repeated use of the clip on Euronews on September 12.
Markelov believes "there is every reason to...open a criminal case and also stop broadcasts by the European channel on the territory of the Russian Federation," the newspaper reported on September 15.
It quoted him as saying the footage violates Russian hate-crimes legislation and is aimed at "setting Europe against Russia, which would never show [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel as Eva Braun or an item in which people in Ku Klux Klan costumes commit an outrage against a portrait of [U.S. President Barack] Obama."