MOSCOW, August 30. /TASS/. Russian-Belarussian relations do not depend on contacts with the Americans, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, commenting on the successive visits to Russia by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

"Special services often continue contacts even when diplomats do not do this. Such things do happen. This should rather be viewed as a positive thing. But there have always been and will be a lot of rumors. Russian-Belarusian relations constitute an absolutely different dimension, which in no way depends on contacts with the Americans," he told Vesti host Pavel Zarubin.

Russian air defenses down 494 Ukrainian drones overnight — top brass

Air defenses intercepted and destroyed fixed-wing drones over the Leningrad, Bryansk, Belgorod, Kaluga, Kursk, Tver, Smolensk, Oryol, Pskov, Tula, Novgorod, Rostov, Krasnodar, and Moscow Regions, Crimea, as well as over the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea

Read more