The Moscow Times

About 20,000 protesters called for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to resign at dozens of rallies over the weekend. Opposition groups had hoped for a larger turnout that would increase pressure on the government.

Ukraine's new government is close to completing work on a bill that would let Gazprom and European Union companies join the country in operating its vast gas pipeline network, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Kluyev said Friday.

Just weeks after Russia suffered its worst-ever Winter Olympics, its team trounced the competition at the Vancouver Winter Paralympics to nab 38 medals, including 12 golds.

Eight major film studios will get 250 million rubles ($8.5 million) each from the state this year, with bonuses for movies that attract more than a million viewers.

President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will continue ruling Russia in a tandem after 2012, when Medvedev's first presidential term expires, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said Friday.

When Spanish police announced the arrest of about 80 reputed mobsters across Europe last week, many media reports trumpeted the development as the latest crackdown on the Russian mafia.

The Russian Orthodox Church made a request to the government that it lower gas prices for Ukrainian chemical companies, saying it was a "sensible initiative" to assist the companies, which help the Ukrainian church.

A Moscow police colonel was detained after he fired two shots from an air gun, injuring two people, amid an argument with a male passenger who refused to give up his seat on the metro to an elderly woman.

All salary arrears have been paid to workers building an Olympic site for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, the Prosecutor General's Office said Friday, but workers denied that they had been paid in full.

A private U.S. institute has awarded $1 million to a low-profile Russian mathematician who rejected the world's highest honor in the field in 2006.

A regional branch of the Federal Customs Service will increase the number of officials who process international express mail next week to deal with a mounting backlog.

The government has proposed a new national holiday, Baptism of Rus Day, in what could be viewed as a victory of the Russian Orthodox Church in the clericalization of Russian life.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. administration lower hurdles to Russian investment and offered U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a list of trade complaints during a meeting Friday.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday called on government agencies to look into rising prices for fertilizer and oil products while promising 100 billion rubles ($3.4 billion) in subsidies to the agricultural sector.

A surprise Russian bid was reported in the works Friday for a multibillion-dollar U.S. aerial-refueling fleet, even as Europe's EADS sought three more months for a possible bid of its own.

Shale gas, which has transformed the U.S. market, could soon be flowing in Europe, shifting the balance of power in the continent's energy relationship with key supplier Russia.

Georgia's rugby team stood holding candles before a priest Saturday to receive words of encouragement all too similar to those issued during the country's short 2008 war — beat Russia.

Russia denied on Monday that its state-run United Aviation Corporation (UAC) planned to bid for a $50 billion contract to replace the U.S. Air Force's fleet of air tankers, rivaling Boeing Co and Europe's EADS.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to deport illegal Armenian migrants.

Russian retail sales rose for a second month in February as higher wages fueled consumer spending, the State Statistics Service said Friday.

The Central Bank will need to continue easing policy, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Friday, as the ruble surges and loan growth misses Central Bank projections.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is "the engine" driving forward his country's bid to host the football World Cup in 2018, Sport, Tourism and Youth Policy Minister Vitaly Mutko said.

The number of people out of work in Russia fell by nearly 400,000 last month, but the economy contracted as investment continued to fall and growth in retail sales and disposable incomes was very slow, data showed Friday.

A Muslim diaspora is demanding that the Sochi 2014 Olympics be canceled or moved unless Russia apologizes for the 19th-century deaths of many of their ancestors in the location where the Winter Games will be held.

Any Australian uranium sales to Russia would meet nonproliferation requirements, but the government remains firmly against sales to India, Trade Minister Simon Crean said Friday.

The ruble pushed past the key level of 34 versus the euro-dollar basket, forcing the Central Bank to shift its floating trading band Friday for the 21st time since mid-February, dealers said.

The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said Friday that it had approved a $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle on the condition that Oracle continues to develop Sun's MySQL database.

The European Union does not see any reason to block a long-delayed gas delivery deal between Poland and Russia, the block's new energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, said Friday.

A Moscow court on Friday sentenced to nine years in prison an eighth accomplice in the 2006 contract killing of First Deputy Central Bank Chairman Andrei Kozlov, the highest-ranking official murdered during Vladimir Putin’s two terms as president.

Sergei Solovyov’s 2009 film “Anna Karenina” packs showings in New York theaters but fails to find a distributor in Russia.