The nuclear deal was possible because the United States, eager to win lucrative contracts with India, successfully lobbied for the Nuclear Suppliers Group to lift a ban on importing nuclear technologies to India last year.

“Don’t hold your breath” should be the catch-all answer to Russians expecting any kind of economic and political modernization or reform under Putin’s rule.

The “Chelovek i Zakon” program broadcast Thursday said Russia team members had drank, smoked hookah pipes and spent time with prostitutes on the eve of the Nov. 14 playoffs.

The death toll from a deadly fire at a Perm nightclub rises to 113 people, and 121 remained hospitalized in Perm, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk as the country observed a day of mourning.

The fate of the exhibition space housing the Central House of Artists and the New Tretyakov Gallery has hung in the balance since plans were announced last year to construct an ambitious Norman Foster-designed project in its place.

Moscow-based users of the Yota provider have been unable to access web sites such as Garry Kasparov’s Kasparov.ru, Solidarity’s Rusolidarnost.ru and the banned National Bolshevik Party’s Nazbol.ru over the past few weeks, bloggers and the sites’ editors said.

After gas prices surged last year and early this year, many European gas companies have begun studying the U.S. technology for producing shale gas, which may be a cheaper source of fuel.

Udmurtia court marshals took photos of Yana Kulikova from her pages on the social networking sites Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki and used them to create accounts on the two sites under a false name in order to trap debtors.

The delay puts Oleg Deripaska and RusAl’s IPO plans on the back foot once more after a breakthrough last week when it clinched a landmark $17 billion debt restructuring deal with creditors.

Starting on March 1, the functions of the two agencies responsible for registering real estate will be merged into a new entity: the Federal Registration Service.