Russian state television reported on Sunday that five people were killed when gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian separatists near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slaviansk.

A fatal gun battle overnight near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slaviansk shows that the Ukrainian authorities are failing to rein in armed extremists, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

Poles are more worried about their national independence than at any time since at least 1991, soon after the collapse of communism in the region, and 80 percent named Russia as the main threat, a survey shows.

The catch-phrase "polite people," a term used to describe the unidentified but gentlemanly soldiers who occupied Crimea before the Russian annexation, has gone from Internet meme to sought-after trademark, with the Defense Ministry's own uniform and foodstuffs supplier among contenders for rights to the phrase.

Ukraine has accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, opening the way for a possible investigation into the violent crackdown by former President Viktor Yanukovych's government on demonstrators, the court announced.

More than 300,000 documents from Russian military archives on World War I have been made available online, a senior archivist said Monday.

If a civil war breaks out in Ukraine, it will not likely follow the Bosnian scenario, but the Spanish one from the mid-1930s.

Russia's Federation Council on Wednesday gave its blessing to legal changes that would require foreign citizens to prove their ability to speak Russian.

A meeting between the leaders of Ukraine and Switzerland got off to an awkward start on Monday when the former greeted the latter with a Danish flag, not realizing his mistake.

Although Putin's domestic policies seem tame compared to Hitler's, his foreign policy could be just as disruptive.