WATCHING pictures on television of a dictator getting his ass whipped — especially when he is one who has been raping his country’s finances for 30 years — is always a visceral pleasure.

Three people died when a passenger plane caught fire and then exploded on a runway at a Siberian airport, Russian officials said today.

People must help each other through the big freeze as temperatures are set to plunge even further, it was warned today.

PETRONEFT — the Irish oil and gas exploration company with a focus on the Russian market — has brought forward to August the expected date for the commencement of production from its two licences in the region.

RUSSIAN President Dmitry Medvedev has said developing the Arctic is crucial to sustaining Russian energy supplies because the region may hold a quarter of the world’s offshore oil and natural-gas reserves.

Russian emergency workers have flown to a Siberian region where smelly orange, yellow and green snow fell.

INVESTIGATORS are focusing their inquiry into the killing of a Russian investigative reporter on former police officers linked to crimes against civilians in Chechnya, a newspaper reported yesterday.

INVESTIGATORS have determined that a strain of bird flu virus infecting fowl in Russia is the type that can infect humans, the Agriculture Ministry said today.

Russia’s richest man Mikhail Khodorkovsky pleaded not guilty to all charges against him today, nearly eight months after his arrest at gunpoint at a Siberian airport.