The prime minister broke his call-in show records, discussing gold teeth and his love for animals and granting a birthday wish.

Under the proposed changes to the Law on Religious Activity, only leaders of registered religious groups and their officially authorized missionaries would be allowed to pass out religious literature, preach and talk about their faith in public.

During his annual televised call-in show, Putin, who as president oversaw Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 and subsequent sentencing to 8 1/2 years in prison on tax and fraud charges, accused the former Yukos head of organizing murders.

The first step toward a better way of handling the South Caucasus should be for Russia, the United States, the European Union, Turkey and Iran to agree to stop trying to push each other out of the region and to stop carving it up into pieces.

The mysterious killing of Stalin’s rival Sergei Kirov on Dec. 1, 1934, has remained one of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded riddles for decades because many of the key documents were immediately classified by the secret police.

At his annual televised call-in show, the prime minister addressed a range of issues, including the upcoming Ukraine elections and the recent Nevsky Express bombing, but remained ambiguous about a possible presidential run in 2012.

In the wake of interviews critical of the Kremlin's pressure on the judicial system on judge will resign from the Constitutional Court at the end of this month, while another has already handed in his resignation as a member of the country’s Council of Judges.

The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church are making progress toward healing their 1,000-year-old rift, a senior Russian official said ahead of President Dmitry Medvedev’s first visit to the Vatican.

Shmatko is heading to Sofia next week for talks on the $1 billion pipeline and Russia’s two other energy projects in the country.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko acknowledged on Thursday that his political career depended on his close ties with Russia.