More from the EU-Russia-Ukraine gas meeting taking place in Berlin:
Ahead of the meeting, Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan said he hoped a compromise on a "fair market price for gas" would be reached during the meeting.
He said a price that can be found at "European hubs, on European markets."
More from Berlin gas talks: according to ITAR-TASS, Russia and the EU have "discussed, bilaterally, all planned issues for the settlement of Ukraine's debt and gas supplies."
The Russian news agency quotes Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak as saying: "At the bilateral meting we discussed all issues concerning the settlement of debt and the need to ensure regular gas supplies and transit."
A new crack in Russia's ban of food imports in response to Western sanctions may be filled with cheese, Interfax reports:
Russia's Economic Development Ministry is not ruling out the possibility of currently banned cheeses and fermented milk products returning to the Russian market since lactose-free milk has been removed from the sanctions list.
"The likelihood exists of renewing shipments of milk products from countries that fell under the food embargo," the Economic Development Ministry said in its social and economic development forecast for Russia in 2015-2017. The ministry added that this move might occur in connection with the removal of lactose-free milk from the list.
According to experts, a number of dairy products, such as long-ripened cheeses, fermented milk products and others, have a low level of lactose, which does not create particular difficulties for foreign companies to reorient their facilities to produce, register and export dairy products to the Russian market as lactose-free, the Economic Development Ministry said.
In response to President Obama's remarks before the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev -- who has tried and failed to launch political parties on three occasions since he was pushed aside by Russian President Boris Yeltsin -- had this to say about the United States. (Obama listed Russian aggression alongside the outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in West Africa and the threat from Islamic State militants in the Middle East as the "tests of this moment.")
"We have one main virus: it's America and its leadership ambitions," Gorbachev told Russian radio, according to Interfax.
He added:
"It's not even political dialogue, it's badmouthing. They want to hurt and provoke, and the main thing is that the conflicts in Europe should continue. For this reason, they [the U.S.] have ambitions to have a monopoly. Ukraine and other things are just pretexts," Gorbachev said.
On a "new cold war," he said: "There is no cold war, but there are indications of it. We don't need a cold war. Such things last for decades and it's difficult for our citizens."
Via Interfax, which describes the "purpose" of the September 21 rally as "protest[ing] against violations of the Russian Constitution and norms of international law," thus avoiding any mention of the demonstrators' objection to Russian actions vis-a-vis Ukraine:
Forty-nine percent of Russians surveyed by Levada Center said they do not support the so-called "Peace March," a protest conducted by the opposition. Twenty-nine percent of the respondents said they support it and 23% are undecided.