Russia & CIS

A reported successful test of a hydrogen bomb by North Korea would amount to a gross violation of international law if confirmed, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Russia to pay damages to an opposition activist arrested at a 2012 Moscow protest.

Moscow believes there is a high probability that Islamic State is using chemical weapons in Syria, the RIA news agency reported on Tuesday.

Attacks on diplomatic missions can never be a legal means of protest, Russia said on Monday, after Iranian demonstrators stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Despite the crisis, the Russian economy did not collapse in 2015. The decline in GDP in 2015 made up only four percent, although in 2009, the index was larger - eight percent. Such an insignificant decline in GDP against the backdrop of the closed financial market is obviously an achievement for the Russian economy

Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko plans to meet an inspection commission of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in Moscow on Jan. 11.

A new appraisal names the United States as a threat to Russia's national security for the first time, a sign of how relations with the West have deteriorated in recent years.

A social network account of Russia's communications minister was temporarily blocked on Sunday in a cyberattack carried out by hackers presenting themselves as a Turkish activist group.

This year Russia was caught in the biggest doping scandal in the history of athletics.

About 500 people were evacuated from two railway stations in Moscow on Friday after police were tipped off about bombs being planted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into a law a bill allowing agents from the Federal Security Service (FSB) to open fire on crowds.

Russian air strikes in Syria have killed 2,371 people - a third of them civilians, including 180 children - according to a tally released Wednesday by a Britain-based monitoring group.

In 2015 Russia was shaken by a series of high-profile trials, with authorities coming down hard on enemies of the regime and showing leniency to friends.

When the Soviet Union crumbled, foreign media companies and entrepreneurs swept into Russia, bringing with them a wave of modernization and expertise.

A Crimean official said on Thursday that Ukraine had cut off a major source of electrical power to the region, a month after saboteurs first plunged the Russian-annexed peninsula into darkness.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has accepted the request from Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to assist in re-conciliation with Russia. The Serbian president has thus become the fourth mediator after the presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Belarus, who said that their relations with Turkey were perfect

The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany have agreed to extend the Minsk peace accord on Ukraine into 2016, the Kremlin said in a statement on Wednesday, following a phone call between the four leaders.

The Ukrainian government will approve a ban on the import of some Russian goods later on Wednesday, said Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, a retaliatory move in a growing trade row between the two former allies.

A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a blogger to five years in jail for what it said was his extremist activity on the Internet after he urged people to attend a protest against high transport fares.