UrBC, Moscow, December 14, 2015. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation proved one of the world’s top hundred arms manufacturers in the year 2014, Prime refers to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as reporting. The Russian company was given the 61st position in the rating, with the maximum (72.5%) increase in sales that year. Some other Russian manufacturers made it to the rating as well, for example, High-Precision Complexes (the 39th place) and RTI Systems (the 91st place). Almaz-Antey, with its 23% increase in sales, was in the 11th place in the rating, OAK was given the 14th

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 14, 2015. Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) has been testing its new amphibious tractor PTS4 for a week; the vehicle is meant for production on a serial scale. The corporation’s press service reports the company experts and representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry had to check the machine’s actual technical characteristics (its speed on water and on soil surfaces and cargo capacity) against its declared specifications. The tests were run in an artificial pond near Omsk: to pass the test, the tractor had to move 200km on

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 14, 2015. LEPSE (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) took on fifty new workers, the company press service reports. The young newcomers gave ‘a pledge of allegiance’ of sorts to LEPSE Director-General Gennady Mamayev, who acted on the entire company’s behalf. ‘I am positive that you will support our plant’s great traditions. Young people currently make up a third of our team, with many of them joining the management on a regular basis. I wish you professional and personal fulfillment at our plant and hope this place becomes your second home and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 14, 2015. The average rent amount on Yekaterinburg housing market dropped by 11% (down to 18,600 RUR a month) in the course of one year, N1.RU and E1.Nedvizhimost’s research findings indicate. One could find a place for 21,000 RUR on average a year ago, but now one-bedroom apartments are 12% cheaper, studio apartments are 11% cheaper, and two-bedroom apartments are 7% cheaper than before. Rents were at their lowest in May and June, but went up a little with the start of the school and academic year. The downward trend was typical of all parts of the city, with

UrBC, Moscow, December 14, 2015. The number of Russia’s poor came to 20.3m people in January-October 2015, which was 2.3m more than a year earlier, Rosstat reports. Poverty rate was thus estimated at 12.4% (17.9m people) in the third quarter of 2015 (against 11.5%, or 16.6m in Q3’14), at 14% (20.1m people) in the second quarter (against 12.1%, or 17.4m in Q2’14), and at 15.9% (22.9m) in the first quarter (against 13.8%, or 19.8m in Q1’14). Poverty rate fluctuations are strikingly seasonal – the figures reach their peak in the first three months of the year and drop to their minimum in the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 14, 2015. BN800 reactor-based power generating unit 4 at Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Station was plugged in and produced its first portion of electric power for the Urals’ energy system on December 10, the station’s PR Department reports. First, the reactor’s performance had to be brought to 25% of its nominal capacity for the purpose; the К-800-130/3000 turbine was set to 3,000 rpm. Following the unit and the power supply system’s synchronization, the reactor’s performance was then brought to 35% of its nominal capacity. The power generating unit entered the