the odds are we. will work. in the stories that shape the way with ice on the brink of defeat in syria rival factions in the country civil war begin searching for a political solution with peace talks in russia. also we visited russia's toughest prison for a rare insight into what life is really like for the country's most dangerous criminals. it is here that some of the country's worst maniacs serial killers terrorists and he wouldn't have leveled and held. unsettling times in germany in chancellor merkel is coalition talks break down leaving more question marks over her future as leader.

and i welcome good afternoon you watching the weekly here in r.t. international our look back at the biggest stories of the last seven days and we start this hour with syria because with the endgame in sight prisoner mixtape their attention is now turning to finding a political solution to the country's drawn out civil war peace talks in russia's resort city of sochi sought to bring together the rival groups who've spent more than six years locked in conflicts well on monday the syrian leader made his second visit to russia during four hours of talks with president putin bashar assad said he is ready to hold discussions with parties interested in resolving the crisis some of whom later arrived in sochi to see if any prank explains. it looks like saudi is shaping out as the new platform for dialogue on syria the resort has become the venue for the first major round of talks on the syrian crisis the syrian

president bashar assad was here on monday. at this stage especially after victories against terrorism we are of course interested in advancing the political process then mr putin had a long phone conversation with donald trump. blatt of our putin gave donald trump a full update on the talks with syrian president bashar assad mr putin also told mr trump about the upcoming summit with the presidents of iran and turkey. it was these three countries that were behind the so-called astronaut talks in the first place and with the terrorists now almost gone this format could prove to be more crucial than ever. large scale military actions against terrorist groups in

syria are coming to an end i'd like to note that thanks to the efforts of russia iran and turkey we have managed to prevent the dissolution of syria stop it from being captured by international terrorists and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe we heard the leaders confirm their assessment the syrian conflict has entered a new stage the era of active fighting is over and time has come for a new settlement opportunities the trilateral meeting today has uk most important is the final stage in putting an end to the bloodshed in syria we have achieved success thanks to the union of iran turkey and russia after roughly one and a half hours of talks we finally heard about the number one decision for the new stage the creation of the syrian national dialogue congress it will be an unprecedented platform for inclusive of all syria talks and all kinds of

political ethnic religious groups are expected to be involved in the leaders say that it should pave the way for a new constitution in syria and new elections it's this kind of communication somehow involving different sides like washington moscow damascus ankara that is giving us a reason to say that things may be looking promising here in a prank reporting that will politics professor side mohammad marandi told us the talks were a positive development but difficult days still lie ahead. fastener fox as well as the current path of. push the power of the process a great deal for the force things have shifted in change of enormously on the ground and hopefully these talks will help pave the way for. the conflict to come to an end but i think that it looks good on paper but it damn sure

it's going to be very complicated in the weeks and months ahead there's a lot to do and it's not clear if the americans and their allies are going to help this process move forward or whether they are going to improve and competed but i think what is what is very positive is that these countries seem. to be determined obviously all three of them have their own opinion. now there is a high security prison on the edge of siberia in which hundreds of inmates and never likely to taste freedom again because they are among russia's most dangerous offenders are many will probably see at their days inside black dolfin arguably the country's toughest jail well this week artie's murder against the everest given unique access to see what life is like inside. in the provincial town at the edge of siberia is a prison but it's no ordinary prison the mere sight of the statue has broken the

most solace butchers the black golfing russia's highest security prison it is here that some of the country's worst maniacs serial killers terrorists and even cannibals i held in this cell a man who raped forty four miners and killed five children aged seven to eleven some of the people in this prison will never be allowed out so we dread for the things that they've done and then the man in a drunken killing frenzy killed six of his friends in this cell a murderer killed eleven people. seven hundred inmates sentenced to life between them they've killed almost four thousand people everything is procedural everything intended to minimize risk from sleeping

schedules to how inmates are a school that bend to the waist and blindfolded so they can't memorize the prisons layout. it may seem excessive humiliating even but do not forget what these people did to be here to that end every cell door has a description of the inmates crimes any sympathy the guards might feel disappears immediately. you ask me if i do it again i thought about it and it would have been better for died with them i probably wouldn't have done it but it's better to die than sacrifice others eagle was just over twenty when he and his father took on a rival gang after killing their enemies they attempted to get rid of witnesses. ordinary civilians in a restaurant seven dead eight injured both he and his father incarcerated here

do see each other sometimes when he fell ill they transferred me to help him for a while the most important thing is to avoid becoming him bettered it is so easy to turn into an animal here some say a life sentence is worse than the death penalty. i've been here for seventeen years and i've never heard anyone say they don't regret it or they'd kill more i'm sorry but that's nonsense. i regret it everything is lost the years go by your health worsens everything passes by i think there are a few people left in here who think they did the right thing they are show you that you were wrong totally wrong you can't do that. to me treat saluted his family his father his mother and his brother he was twenty now he's forty five we don't usually watch t.v. we see people who have committed two or three murders get sentenced to seventeen or nineteen years that isn't so terrible yes we are guilty before the law yes we are

guilty before the public but if they're left out after twenty years why are there fraid of letting us out who in their fifty's could be bothered to do anything all they would want is a normal life. the difference is that life sentences are mostly reserved for crimes of such brutality that they escape reason for individuals deemed a permanent danger to society one inmate released early from the black dolphin committed the murder on the very train that was taking him home most will never see release control he is total god's check on everyone every fifteen minutes in cell cameras i'm one of the twenty four seven and there is three doors to every cell this is a cell for those sentenced to life it's locked with a full metal door a cage door and another one for complete security we essentially it's easy to see

why no one out is in a coffin for i guess the. three way coalition collapsed on monday could mean a snap election is on the cards in which far right parties are predicted to make further grand against the more established ones and this means germany is now considering going back to square one and another four years of the grand coalition . moody's biggest reason we should value possible talks with the social democrats of course we are prepared to have talks we have been in a grand coalition for the last four years and we have done a good job which you do a lot given you invited of course the s.p.d.m. the acting federal governments will continue to work together there is no other way only one thing is now completely clear the talks must be carried out though that in this way we can always depend on is the fusions the members of our party would agree on that. well the preferred choice after september's election is the

so-called jamaican coalition between the party the free democrats and the grains nicknamed that way to the color of each party's logo well with the find a way out our europe correspondent looks at the options she has left. the day after the bundestag election in september angela merkel said that she was confident that by christmas she would have a ruling coalition government in place or fast forward through weeks of torture a sit times negotiations with the green party and the pro-business free democrats while the wheels of that coalition health fell off well and truly with christie and lynn of the free democrats delivering the killer blow we have the other ones we will not abandon our voters for a policy with which we are not convinced it is better not to govern than to govern badly ingrained differences between the parties on key issues such as climate change refugees and the budget saw the so-called jamaica coalition breakdown.

one other option available to angela merkel would be to rule over a minority government most likely with the green party. but a minority government would be unstable at best and would certainly require horse trading on gargantuan proportions with the other four parties in parliament if the government was to well pass anything more than just time in the chamber it's also

worth noting that this would be a first in modern german history and wouldn't exactly fit the profile of the german voters who do love stabile if he so where does this leave us the other option would be we go back to the polls for fresh elections. so back to the polls we go well step forward german president frank vaulted steinmeyer it's predominantly a ceremonial role but when it comes to installing a government that's where the german presidency has executive power it will be up to mr steinmeier whether he decides that he accepts angola merkel as the head of a minority government or whether he dissolves parliament triggering elections and for the long serving leader mrs merkel that could well prove to be a storm she doesn't whether that's really fun for somebody has got to be responsible for that the federal chancellor created this situation she's been in power for what feels like

a hundred years and now she should be asking herself maybe i have something to do with this situation. mrs merkel has failed it's time for her now to take a step back that night at the end of the merkel era began europe's biggest economy is heading into uncharted territory with current polling suggesting that a new ballot wouldn't return any results too different from what we had in september it does seem that there is no immediate solution to the current instability germany is facing and of course the implications that has for the why do european union peter all of a r.t. berlin what we spoke to members from some of germany's political parties on the recent twists and turns in the bundestag and who's to blame for the breakdown in talks. my party has fraud from the beginning said that we are guided by principles we have been elected because we. did to

modernize the country we entered into these negotiations with good faith and things went well in the first phase of the coalition talks we then run into difficulties and the main obstacle was caused by the greens my party i think would be willing to resume talks if there is a meaningful outcome well this is very surprising to me so far she has always clung to power and i thought she would have sought another negotiate a solution so this is a surprise but everybody is supporting just the f.t.p. but in the end to make a coalition agree the f.t.p. the c.s.u. the c.d.u. was a very very unlikely construct a very strange construct that of course cannot work and we could see that the country is at some turmoil here and that this is indeed to the unprecedented situation we don't know if there's going to be new elections but if there are going

to be new elections i'm pretty certain the f.t.p. and probably also the i.f.b. the opposition party that came into the parliament with thirteen point six percent of the votes will gain because this. is quite a silent significant part of the population that wants a change in the immigration policy so i would be surprised if we had fresh elections but apparently stated that we are going to have them. watch and we can still ahead see this our parent company has been busy making changes to especially when it comes to russian media but have a look at that in detail. but how do you shortly. they put themselves on the on the big get accept the reject. so when you want to be president. or somehow want to be brits. it's

a right to be for us this is what before us three in the morning can't be good that i'm interested always in the waters of my. question. well the culture is good out of the big picture but it's. a real business which we need to maintain we need to have it but it's no defect of the prospects that the more we go forward with the draw with the automotive g.p.s. driven tractors of the machines will have less and less people so the fact that we easily get this c.e.o. business just shows how the rest of the world is getting rid of this beast. with it with eager. hello again on monday that google's parent company is working on the ranking

stories from the sputnik news agency in web searches the move would make articles harder to find alphabet boss attic schmidt's comments came at a security forum in canada when he was asked about our. ad sense service i had a subscription for google alerts in german language and getting them every day out of ten results between five and ten every day we have sputnik news which is a russian german program no outlet and when i clicked on them they will monitor rise to that sense is it really necessary to monitor. russian propaganda outlets with google it's and so we're well aware of this one and we're working on detecting this kind of scenario you're describing and again the ranking the ranking those kinds of sites it's basically artie and sputnik are the two and there's a whole bunch of coverage about what we're doing there but we're well aware of it

we're trying to engineer the systems to prevent it we don't want to ban the sites. well eric schmidt who just heard there has a long time relationship with the democratic party leadership in the u.s. he was reportedly a donor to barack obama's campaign later becoming an advisor to his administration he's also believed to be the tech mastermind behind hillary clinton's presidential campaign two although he's never confirmed that himself but under pressure from the u.s. authorities google recently launched an investigation into alleged russian meddling but its own report to congress says it found no evidence that r.t. had violated its policies or mean it related to you tube in any way to get its status as the most viewed news network despite that google dropped our channel from its you to prime analyst in the u.s. without notice or explanation it only later explained it to congress hearing when grilled on why the firm hadn't carried out the move before this resell garder why

did gould google get preferred status to russia today a russian propaganda arm on youtube. there was a period of time where russia today qualified really because of algorithms to participate in a an advertising program why didn't you revert artie's preferred status after the i.c.a. came out in january two thousand and seventeen it took you to september of two thousand and seventeen to do it the removal of r t from the program was actually a result of the as as i understand it is a are is a result of some of the drop in viewership not as a result of any action otherwise so there was there was nothing about our t.v. or is its content that. meant that it stayed in or stayed out. however eric schmidt's remarks have been contradicted by

a google representative who did say there are no concrete plans that the rank russian media including ati we discuss the developments with human rights lawyer down cooperating. it is a form of censorship in the idea is to lead readers away from r.t. content and it will have an impact on the discourse in this country google's already started the process against north american alternative media sources in august there was a report that they've already been d. ranking twelve different north american alternative media sources all of these sources have now reported a huge decrease in readership think the attack on r t which has a very different view of those things. is an attack on those alternative narratives of issues that are very important to the american people. now

a spike in suicides among french police offices this she has intensified concern about the stress caused by overwork and the country's high era terror threat levels given ski has been to meet one officer who's made not one but attempts to take her own life. oh highly not her real name is an officer with more than two decades of experience having joined the police at nineteen she was very motivated and excited about the job but jeez later the pressure of her work called gates of jihad. is a has no issue we will stop saying that please some of the hits traumatized by the way they decide to commit suicide more easily than they are that is why i know it's because they have weapons on them how many of them hang themselves throw themselves on the trains take pills my female colleague forty nine years old killed herself last week with a hunting rifle first in more proof. is one of the lucky ones dozens of

others have succumbed to the extreme pressures they face she says there was only one reason why she pulled through and that was her children. i realize that my child will come home that day and it saved my life but the lack of humanity in place nowadays leads to the situation when many of my colleagues profess to die instead of fighting. shout it is good reporting and you've been watching the weekly good to have a company this afternoon don't forget we've got plenty more stories to get out into hour. our

. seen years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with a gun if a bad guy tried to get to one of my family members he would have better life better and i think they are inheriting whatever my my baby says my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by far olds in the us and we had a thought to me as i did this this is a middle school we go through drills and we put ourselves in real scenarios it was interesting to see who actually got hit by the gun i decided to return to

the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photographed those years ago i don't know this but we are not. was it to. americans. i'm fortunate the wife my own shows support of some. contrary in there. for making unsafe.

hello and welcome to all the part that's diseases it's very common condition and long based or speech countries but it's the facts on the body of the economy as well as the potential cure up always country specific what would it take for russia both economically and politically to win itself all of the hydrocarbon the windfall all to discuss that i'm now joined by anthony marsh chung director of the economic policy program at the carnegie moscow center midsomer of china's great to talk to you big fan of yours for a long time if you now it's generally believed that the mission of an addiction is the first step toward coming clean and then that sounds russia's excessive reliance on hydrocarbons has long been recognized but i wonder if it has been recognized as something unequivocal about something that needs to be broken where. well i wouldn't completely of the alcoholism and the had been some initial resources in the service of course is

a disease which is imposed by the be here or the second one is a structural problem russia cannot get rid of the hydrocarbons and until european union stops to buy a cup. and because we have the enormous overwhelming amounts of cash coming from the hydrocarbons so hard to fight for the diversification appreciation of the currency that makes other sectors either less competitive or less attractive even here often the very skeptical and critical of the russian government if you believe that the russian authorities. had enough instruments prior to two thousand and fourteen to encourage other sectors and. sad at the fact of that very sharp robel appreciation well i wouldn't believe the two to the kind of surprise and even would not talk about kosovo amount or the oil price exclusively with her for it to be because of the policies or other factors something water can buy but

pursuing doesn't affect the economy that much and as we saw in the in the ruble depreciation after the prices fall russia kutas the foreign currency and could find the ground of this free fall and that was partially of this from what i understand because russia actually did try to. counterbalance as dependency on oil and gas by sort of. stashing the winfall income away in various funds it would see that as if you look at the resource which was your token for the reserves the reserves didn't follow substantial now we we still increase or was that. it was merely because russian government stayed away of the problem they were out of the the good.