Putin Visits Paratroopers on Eve of Holiday

NATO will deploy reconnaissance planes in Poland and Romania to monitor the Ukrainian crisis, an official said, shortly after the U.S. announced that it was sending fighter jets to the same region in a show of support for its allies.

The Obama administration is stepping up its attempts to court China's support for isolating Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine.

The only English roundup of today's Russian-language newspapers.

A U.S. astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space landed safely and on time on Tuesday in Kazakhstan, defying bad weather and ending their 166-day mission aboard the International Space Station.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will only meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ahead of a planned referendum in Crimea this Sunday if Russia demonstrates a willingness to work toward a diplomatic solution.

If the extremists who seized power in Kiev do not accept Russia's democratic proposals, Russia will likely be forced to revert to military means to solve the crisis in Ukraine.

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina have been attacked by five young men at a McDonald's in Nizhny Novgorod.

The Federation Council is drawing up a bill that would allow the government to confiscate the property of U.S. and European companies in the event of Western sanctions, though political analysts dismiss both actions as intimidating rhetoric unlikely turn into action.

President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the claim that the heavily armed camouflaged men blocking military units in Crimea are Russian, but nobody in Crimea is buying it.

The top diplomats of Russia and the U.S. agreed at their meeting on Wednesday that they should help Ukraine to implement an EU-brokered reconciliation deal, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

With Viktor Yanukovych's whereabouts unverified on Saturday, protesters and journalists decided to have a closer look at his home. They found the hallmarks of a life lived in luxury — and signs of a hasty retreat.

Russia has warned the West that it is willing to fight a war over Crimea, a Ukrainian region where 60 percent of the population is ethnically Russian and where Russia's Black Sea fleet is stationed.

As a result of the confusion, Russia gave Crimea to Ukraine but retained Sevastopol.

As the battle on Maidan ends with the defeat and humiliation of President Viktor Yanukovych, some observers have turned their attention to Ukraine's Crimea region with the following question: If Ukraine turns toward the European Union and the West, will President Vladimir Putin move to seize Crimea?

The degradation of mainstream U.S. press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to U.S. national security, has been underway for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines — particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin — is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.