A major exchange of war prisoners is getting under way in eastern Ukraine, with about 370 expected to be released.

Russia’s foreign minister has urged those holding a new round of talks on easing Ukraine’s crisis to push for a ceasefire between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists.

A total of 49 people have died after pro-Russian separatists shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane, officials said.

The mayor of Ukraine’s second-largest city has been shot in the back and pro-Russian insurgents have seized more government buildings in the country as unrest continued.

Pro-Russian insurgents commandeered six Ukrainian armoured vehicles and hoisted Russian flags over them, dampening the government’s hopes of re-establishing control over restive eastern Ukraine.

Pro-Russian separatists have seized a police building in yet another city in Russian-leaning eastern Ukraine, defying government warnings that it was preparing to act against the insurgents.

Pro-Russia demonstrators who seized the regional administration building in Ukraine’s second-largest city have been driven out of the building and about 70 of them were arrested, Ukraine’s interior minister said today.

Dozens of armed men in military uniforms have seized an airport in Ukraine’s strategic Crimea region, it is reported.

A man helping to construct the stage for a major protest rally in Moscow has died after a column of sound equipment collapsed.

Several protesters were arrested today outside the upper chamber of Russia’s parliament as it prepared to vote on a controversial measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children.

A member of punk band Pussy Riot was freed on appeal yesterday, but a court upheld sentences for two others imposed over a cathedral protest against Vladimir Putin.

A drunk driver crashed his car into a bus stop in Moscow, killing seven people and injuring three others, Russian police have said.

Russia remained at loggerheads with the US and its European allies ahead of a United Nations Security Council vote tonight on a new Syria resolution.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton yesterday demanded UN action to stop spiralling violence in Syria as she prepared to join other top diplomats in pressing a reluctant Russia.

Russia’s deputy prime minister has reportedly said that politicians should consider adopting a controversial anti-gay bill.

A passenger jet crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames on a main road in north-western Russia, just short of a runway whose high-intensity lights had failed, killing 44 people. Eight people survived.

A rush-hour explosion which tore through an underground station in Belarus’ capital Minsk, killing 12 people and wounding 126, was a terrorist act, an official said.

A suicide car-bomber killed three soldiers and wounded 32 others in an attack on a military base in Russia’s violence-plagued republic of Dagestan today, officials said.

The number of deaths in Moscow is twice as high as usual because of smog suffocating the city from ongoing wildfires nearby, the Russian capital’s chief health official said today.

IRAN yesterday said it would refuse to discuss a newly declared nuclear plant at forthcoming international talks and cautioned Western powers it could curb co-operation further if they repeated “past mistakes”.

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama will visit Russia today in the hope of reaching agreements on military transit and weapons reductions to revive a relationship that last year plunged to a post-Cold War low.

GEORGIA said it put down a mutiny at a military base yesterday and accused Moscow of trying to foment a wider rebellion on the eve of NATO war games in the former Soviet republic.

A Russian Air Force chief said today that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had offered an island as a temporary base for strategic Russian bombers, the Interfax news agency reported.

About 20 people died today in a nursing home fire in north-western Russia, officials said.

A HUMAN rights lawyer who fought against the early release of a Russian colonel convicted of murdering a Chechen woman was shot dead on a Moscow street yesterday, days after the officer left prison, law enforcement authorities said.

Moscow will go ahead with its plan to station missiles near Poland only if the United States deploys missile defences in Europe, a senior Russian diplomat said today.

Russian troops have started dismantling positions in the so-called security zones inside Georgia that they have occupied since the war in August, Georgian and EU officials said.

A CAR exploded outside the Russian military’s headquarters in South Ossetia yesterday, killing six people and wounding four, the government of the Moscow-backed separatist region in Georgia said.

A car exploded outside the Russian military’s headquarters in South Ossetia today, killing seven people and wounding three, the government of the Moscow-backed separatist region said.

Russia warned the West against supporting Georgia’s leadership, calling for an arms embargo against the ex-Soviet republic until a different government was in place.

Uncertainty remained in the troubled region of Georgia today as a ceasefire agreement awaited signature by the Russian president.

Georgian troops today pulled out of the capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia under massive Russian shelling.

Iran’s first nuclear power plant, which is being built by Russia, will not come online before late 2008, Russian news reports said today.

Russia’s military today deployed its first batch of new air defence missile systems which the air force chief said could be used to protect 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Russia's top prosecutor told his British counterpart today that Russia could prosecute the chief suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko killing if Britain presents sufficient evidence, the Interfax news agency reported.

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office today said it would not turn over Andrei Lugovoy, charged by Britain in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, the Interfax news agency reported.

A businessman linked to the poisoning death of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko today said he had been released from a Moscow hospital where he was reportedly being treated for radiation exposure.

A key witness in the poisoning death of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko today faced a second round of questioning by British investigators, news reports said.

A senior Russian diplomat said today Moscow will not back the European draft resolution on Iran at the UN Security Council, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia’s top prosecutor today took charge of investigating the murder of a journalist who was a prominent critic of the war in Chechnya and planned to publish a story about torture and abductions in the region.

A prominent Russian journalist famous for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya was killed today in Moscow, police and prosecutors said.

A Russian passenger jet with at least 170 people aboard crashed in eastern Ukraine today, and a Russian news agency cited Ukrainian emergency officials as saying there were no survivors.

The Russian capital’s top prosecutor today said that a bomb blast at a Moscow market that killed 10 people was most likely a hate crime, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia’s defence minister today hailed the killing of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev as a just retribution to “our bin Laden", but said that his death did not mean an end to the fight against rebels.