The Defense Ministry plans to spend 729 million rubles ($24.5 million) on eight underwater drones made by Icelandic firm Teledyne Gavia.

Almost 14 million foreigners and stateless people legally arrived in Russia last year.

Forecasts say the temperature in Moscow will be about minus 16 degrees Celsius Saturday when tens of thousands of people will take to the streets, both in support of and in opposition to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's run for the presidency.

The official in charge of Russia's pro-Kremlin youth groups found himself embroiled in scandal Thursday after hackers posted links to what they claimed were thousands of his private e-mail messages.

Perhaps the central message of the collapse of Soviet communism can be summed up as follows: If it is to survive and flourish on the world stage, Russia needs to develop a different kind of realpolitik.

Distinguished opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov excoriated the government in a documentary aired Wednesday night on state-controlled Channel One.

What is национальность?
Dictionaries tell you that it's ethnicity: принадлежность человека к этнической общности, отличающейся особенностями языка, культуры, психологии, традиций, обычаев, образа жизни (a person's identification with an ethnic group that is distinguished by a distinctive language, culture, psychology, traditions, customs and way of life).

The daughter of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko told U.S. lawmakers that her mother is being tortured in prison.

The father of FSB-officer-turned-Kremlin-critic Alexander Litvinenko called his son a "British spy" and said he no longer believes Russian authorities were responsible for his death.

As the anti-election fraud protest at Prospekt Akademika Sakharova raged around her, Yelena Bogush seemed out of place.

Putin has always been the ultimate "Teflon president" — but certainly not in the Ronald Reagan sense of the word. Putin's brand of Teflon is clearly made in Russia. Because he wants to avoid uncomfortable questions about his decade-long rule, Putin is once again refusing to participate in presidential debates.

The history of successive authoritarian regimes in Russia reveals a recurring pattern: They do not die from external blows or domestic insurgencies.

Vladimir Putin's elections campaign manager has cast new doubt on the continuance of the ruling tandem by suggesting that President Dmitry Medvedev should do more to support the prime minister's bid to return to the Kremlin.

Prime Minister and leading presidential candidate Vladimir Putin acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that he might face a runoff in the March election but warned that it might result in the "destabilization" of the country.

A group of Russian businessmen calling itself the International Anti-Corruption Committee is creating a list of 50 corrupt government officials and plans to present proof that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stole hundreds of millions of dollars.

TNK-BP vice president and UK native Alexander Dodds was hospitalized with a skull fracture after falling from stairs when exiting a plane at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport.

In Prague, tourists line up to visit the "New-Old" synagogue, which was new when it was built, in 1270. On Jan. 23, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published an essay on the "national question" in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Like the Prague synagogue, Putin's article is something that is called new, but in fact, it is quite old.

Hundreds of cars with white ribbons, banners and balloons drove around Moscow's Garden Ring Road on Sunday afternoon to demand fair elections and urge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to step down.

In 2006, an exposé about British "spy stones" in a film by pro-Kremlin television journalist Arkady Mamontov set off a media storm. The story was so advantageous for the Kremlin that many commentators suspected that the device was not real and that the whole story was a fabrication created to justify a government attack on nongovernmental organizations that were active in Russia.

Ambassador Michael McFaul's first steps on arrival in Moscow were marked by a scandal in the State Duma, the media and elsewhere.

In a city that was once the cradle of Russian democracy, an unprecedented new campaign kicked off over the weekend to install web cameras in every polling station around the country in an effort to prevent voting fraud.

Two Russian warships arrived in Syria on Sunday, news agencies reported, a visit that will likely be seen as a show of force and a display of support for President Bashar Assad's government.

If Putin gave up power at any age, he and dozens of his friends and colleagues who have become millionaires and billionaires over the past 10 years through their Kremlin-connected businesses could face serious corruption charges. This is why the best, and perhaps only, way for Putin to preserve immunity is to stay in power until death.

Can an entire people go mad? Sometimes it certainly seems so.
Images of hundreds of thousands of North Koreans howling with grief over Kim Jong Il's death suggest something very disturbing. Was this an exercise in mass delusion? A ritual of collective masochism?

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin got very angry last Wednesday when he met with the editors-in-chief of Russia's top media outlets.

A Russian state commission investigating the crash of the Fobos-Grunt Mars probe will conduct tests to see whether U.S. radar played a role in the spacecraft's failure.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed a radical rollback of his own social and fiscal policies in a draft of his presidential program, which touts economic modernization and strengthening rule of law.

U.S. President Barack Obama caused considerable damage to the Kremlin during a visit to the Pentagon last week when he announced a decisive reduction in the military ambitions of the United States. This was a serious blow to Russia's propagandistic stereotype that Washington is still determined to dominate the world, with Russia being at the top of the U.S. list of targets.

Well muscled and menacing at first glance, former Soviet soldier Pavel Dukhin might be the last person you'd want to have beat you with tree branches, although that is exactly what his job is.

Demographics make it a candidate’s market, but foreigners have to offer something unique to find their place.