Today the Russian city of Volgograd — Tsaritsyn until 1925 — will be known again as Stalingrad, the name it lost in 1961 when the USSR tried to purge the memory of one of the greatest, most murderous tyrants and leaders of the last century.

Seventy years ago today Hitler’s armies at Stalingrad surrendered after 200 days of the most savage fighting. Geoffrey Roberts on the moment the long, crooked and twisted journey to today’s democratic Europe began

General Zhukov is seen by many as a hero who defeated Hitler and by others as an egotistical brute. Either way he lives on in public consciousness in Russia today, writes Geoffrey Roberts

Authorities are scrambling to save hundreds of starving and endangered Dalmatian pelicans after the Caspian Sea froze for the first time in years.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called for rapid changes in Russia’s troubled air transport industry as the country mourned a crash that killed 43 people, among them most of a leading hockey team.

Investigators were today searching for flight recorders in the shattered remains of an airliner that crashed on the banks of the Volga River, killing 43 people including most of one of Russia's premier hockey teams.

RUSSIA said there was little hope of finding any more people alive after an overloaded tourist boat sank in the Volga river, killing as many as 128 people in Russia’s worst river accident in three decades.

More than 100 people, many of them children, were feared drowned today after an overloaded Russian cruise ship sank on the Volga river.

Dozens of children are believed to be among 101 people missing after a 56-year-old tourist boat with 188 people on board listed and sank in one of the world’s largest reservoirs.

EMERGENCY officials say that 102 people, including dozens of children, are missing and at least one is dead after a passenger boat with more than 180 people on board sank in the Volga River yesterday.

At least one person has been killed and 15 others are missing after a passenger boat with more than 180 people onboard sank on the Volga river in central Russia.

TILLAGE experts are keeping a close eye on spring barley and wheat crops in the hope that the recent regional dry spells haven’t done too much damage.

IRISH entrepreneurs helped Qatari football chiefs keep cool heads in their successful bid for World Cup 2022.

THE corncrake, as everyone knows, is in trouble. Once common, this noisy little relative of the water-hen kept people awake at night with its rhythmic rasping.

By Jean Lombard

RATS, it appears, have returned to Hamelin, 700 years after the Pied Piper banished them.

THE last nine members of a Russian doomsday cult holed up underground for months awaiting the end of the world abandoned their cave yesterday.

A Russian airliner attempting to land in heavy fog in the central Russian city of Samara landed short of the runway, scraped along the landing strip and overturned. Seven people died and at least 26 were injured, authorities and company officials said.

Russian officials today denied a report of an accident at a chemical weapons reprocessing site, the RIA-Novosti and Interfax news agencies reported.

THE latest common, or garden, food to be elevated to haute-cuisine is none other than the humble rhubarb stalk.