The governor of a Russian region where a plane carrying Poland’s President has crashed said there are no survivors.

VLADIMIR PUTIN vowed yesterday to “drag out of the sewer” the masterminds of the twin suicide bombing of the Moscow subway system that killed 39 people and left scores wounded.

Flags flew at half-mast on government buildings and at the Kremlin as a day of national mourning for the victims of the Moscow tube blasts began.

A Russian state television network says Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who sent millions to their deaths in the Great Purge of the 1930s, has been voted the country’s third-greatest historical figure.

The fire safety system on new Russian nuclear-powered submarine malfunctioned on a test run in the Sea of Japan, spewing chemicals that killed at least 20 people and injured 21 others, officials said today.

Ninety years after he was executed, Tsar Nicholas II is leading a tight race to be named the greatest Russian in history.

Two deep-diving Russian miniature submarines today descended more than two and a half miles to the ocean floor beneath the North Pole, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

One of Russia’s two deep-diving miniature submarines today began its descent more than two-and-a-half miles beneath the ice to the ocean floor beneath the North Pole, RTR television reported.

AN ambitious Russian naval expedition has resumed its voyage toward the North Pole after the crew repaired the research ship’s engine, a Russian TV correspondent aboard the ship reported.

A Russian Aeroflot airliner made an unscheduled landing at Prague’s Ruzyne international airport today after an apparent hijacking attempt, Czech Republic police said.

RUSSIA’S intelligence service accused four British diplomats of involvement in a spy ring in which agents allegedly passed secrets through a hi-tech communications system hidden in an innocent-looking stone in a Moscow park.

Cold weather so painful that even winter-hardened Russians complained about it has gripped Moscow and much of the rest of the country.

The top prosecutor in the Russian republic of Chechnya said today that a criminal investigation has been opened into the improper storage of radioactive materials by a state-owned company in the capital, Grozny.

Russian sailors rescued with British help after three days trapped in a mini-submarine deep in the Pacific revealed today how they struggled with rapidly decreasing water and oxygen supplies while waiting anxiously in the darkness and cold.

Russia’s Supreme Court today convicted three federal judges of fraud for a series of illegal real estate deals, news reports said.

Eleven people were killed and 15 injured when a truck ploughed into a passenger bus in the central Russian region of Oryol, the Emergency Situations Ministry said today.

Angry pensioners demanding that their social security benefits be restored staged a second day of protests in President Vladimir Putin’s home city, joining the call from protesters in other cities for him to resign.

Funeral processions filled the rainy streets of Beslan, carrying coffins large and small, as townspeople buried scores of victims of a carefully-planned school siege that prosecutors linked to a Chechen rebel leader.

A NUMB Russia observed the first of two days of national of mourning yesterday for the hundreds of victims of the school siege while criticism mounted on the government over its handling of the situation.

A numb Russia observed a national day of mourning for the more than 350 victims of the terrorist school seizure today, while desperate families searched for the missing in grief-stricken Beslan and criticism of the government mounted.

A SHAKEN President Vladimir Putin went on national television this weekend to make a rare and candid admission of Russian weakness in the face of an "all-out war" by terrorists.

A fire tore through a Moscow university dormitory early today, killing at least 32 foreign students and injuring 78 others.

A suicide attacker rammed a truck packed with explosives through the gates of a Russian military hospital near Chechnya, destroying the building and killing at least 27 people, authorities said. One official put the death toll at 35.

Russian television has aired film it says was recorded by the Chechen gunmen inside the Moscow theatre they seized last month.