Several EU countries announced on February 4 that they would recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela. This was stated by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

The Levada Center's poll data that 41% of young Russians want to go abroad cannot be considered in isolation from other survey results. In addition, the figure itself is not that high, said Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president's press secretary. "When you look at sociological surveys, you need to look at the questions that are asked.

For illegal security activities, in addition to fines, the National Guard proposed to assign mandatory work. The bill prepared by the department has been published for public discussion, Meduza writes . It is proposed to increase fines for security guards without a license from 1.5-2.5 thousand to 2.5-5 thousand rubles. For officials, it is proposed to raise the fine to 5-10 thousand rubles, for legal entities - up to 30-60 thousand.

"In order to ensure peace and democracy in Venezuela, the UK is considering several options, including sanctions," Prime Minister Spokesman James Slack said. “The Venezuelan people deserve a better future, they have suffered enough and the Maduro regime must end. The time has come for free and fair elections,” Slack said, according to Reuters . “We are looking at what further steps we can take to ensure peace and democracy in Venezuela, including through sanctions,” he added.

The Central Election Commission of Ukraine has completed the acceptance of documents from presidential candidates. According to the head of the department for interaction with the media of the CEC Konstantin Khivrenko, the commission received 83 applications, of which 28 were approved, 22 were not accepted for various reasons, and 33 more are under consideration.

Owned by Igor Chaika, the son of Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, the Charter company has received contracts for garbage collection in Moscow and the Moscow region for a total of 106 million rubles since the beginning of the year. According to MBH Media, citing SPARK-Interfax data, since January 2019, Chaika's company has received more than 154 contracts for the removal and disposal of garbage. Most of them are concluded with budgetary institutions - kindergartens, schools and gymnasiums.

The families of Russian servicemen who died in Syria are forced to seek the payments due to them through the courts. Military registration and enlistment offices refuse to recognize contract servicemen as combat veterans, Kommersant writes . The newspaper tells about the widow of a Russian officer, Vera Pylyonok. Her husband died in Syria in March 2018 while landing an An-26 aircraft at the Russian Khmeimim airbase.

The prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region spoke about the progress of the investigation into the death of the Dyatlov group in February 1959 and explained the discrepancy between the dates of the initiation of the case and the notes of the person investigating him. The representative of the department, Andrey Kuryakov, showed the volume of the criminal case and said that this volume was the only one, Ekaterinburg Online reports .

According to Rosstat, GDP growth in 2018 was 2.3% compared to 1.6% a year earlier. This is the maximum figure since 2012; the Ministry of Economic Development did not expect such economic growth. GDP grew due to construction, mining and military production. According to Vedomosti , the Ministry of Economic Development predicted growth rates above 2% only by 2021, the Central Bank in 2017 predicted economic growth of 1.5-2% for 2018.

In dozens of cities of the Arkhangelsk region and Komi, thousands of northerners entered rallies against the transformation of their land into a dump for Moscow garbage.

Updated: the number of victims has reached seven. The death toll from a fire in a residential building on Nikitsky Boulevard in central Moscow has risen to six people, including one minor. As TASS was told in the Main Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in Moscow, during the examination of the fire site, the bodies of two more dead were found. According to preliminary data, among the dead - a man, three women and one boy.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved the state program for the development of Crimea and Sevastopol, 310 billion rubles have been allocated for its implementation. “This document covers the whole range of tasks that need to be solved for the development of the peninsula. It also includes the federal target program, which has been implemented on the peninsula since 2015. That is, this is not some kind of new work, this is a continuation of the old one.

The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) presented data from a study on the attitude of Russians to the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty). Three-quarters of respondents (74%) heard about the US intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty. Almost two-thirds of respondents believe that Russia is somehow interested in maintaining the Treaty (62%). The opposite opinion is shared by 21% of respondents.

The US will send 3,750 troops to the border with Mexico. According to the US Department of Defense, the number of US troops on the border will increase by about six times to 4,350 people. The Pentagon clarified that additional units will be deployed for 90 days, according to Reuters . Earlier it was reported that the Pentagon decided to extend the military operation on the US-Mexico border until the end of September 2019.

Italy's Deputy Foreign Minister Manlio di Stefano has announced that his country will not recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim president. “Italy does not recognize Guaidó because we are absolutely opposed to a country or a group of third countries being able to determine the domestic policy of another country. This is called the principle of non-intervention, which is recognized by the UN, ”he said, according to Mexico News .