Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak defended brutal police treatment of protest group Pussy Riot in Sochi, insisting at a media briefing today that they had provoked a conflict.

Ever since the Winter Olympics were awarded to Russia, fears were raised about potential terrorist attacks, which have plagued the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union, writes Dmitri Trenin.

Yards from its improbable palm-fringed seafront and attended by a president whose seven-year, £31bn dream was starting to unfold before his steely eyes, Sochi welcomed the Winter Olympics with an opening ceremony of fittingly exorbitant scale in the Fisht Stadium last night.

A passenger on board an Istanbul-bound flight claimed there was a bomb on board and tried to hijack the plane to Sochi, Russia, where the Winter Olympics are kicking off, an official says.

Olympic Council of Ireland President Pat Hickey is not worried by the security concerns surrounding next month’s Winter Games in Sochi.

The Olympic Council of Ireland received an email containing terrorist threats ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

I know how galling this all must be, hearing about the big North American freeze and the tremors of polar madness it’s firing across the ocean to stir things up around your way.

Police detained dozens of people yesterday in sweeps through the Russian city of Volgograd after two deadly attacks in less than 24 hours raised security fears ahead of the Winter Olympics.

IOC President Thomas Bach expressed full confidence yesterday that Russian authorities will deliver a “safe and secure” Winter Olympics in Sochi despite the two deadly suicide bombings in southern Russia that heightened concerns about the terrorist threat to the Games.

Olympic chiefs are monitoring the safety and security situation in Russia after a second suicide bomb hit the city of Volgograd, killing at least 14 people.

A blast that tore through an electric bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd during Monday’s morning rush hour, killing 14, was probably carried out by suicide bombers from the same organisation behind a railway explosion a day earlier, officials said.

At least 10 people have been killed in a bus explosion in Volgograd, Russia’s emergency situations ministry has said.

A suicide bomber struck a busy railway station in southern Russia yesterday, killing herself and at least 15 others and wounding scores more, officials said, in a stark reminder of the threat Russia is facing as it prepares to host February’s Olympics in Sochi.

Fifteen people died and scores were wounded when a female suicide bomber struck at a railway station in southern Russia.

A female suicide bomber killed at least 14 people and wounded scores more at a railway station in southern Russia.

Throughout a glittering career, Sonia O’Sullivan won the hearts of the nation and transcended Irish sport. Though she left athletics with far more memories than medals, the Cobh woman left it with few regrets.

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.

The 11 host cities for the 2018 World Cup in Russia have been announced.

A NEW outbreak of forest fires in Russia has killed four people in the south of the country.

A new outbreak of forest fires in Russia has killed four people in the south of the country.

A Russian court today convicted and fined the editor of a newspaper who was charged with inciting religious strife by publishing the Prophet Muhammad cartoons two months ago.

Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation against the editor of a newspaper which became the first Russian media outlet to reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that have sparked violence in Muslim countries, officials said today.

Russian prosecutors has opened an investigation after a newspaper in the southern city of Volgograd published a cartoon of Jesus, Moses, Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed, a senior prosecutor said today.

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

Yelena Slesarenko upset red-hot favourite Hestrie Cloete in the high jump as the Russian added Olympic gold to her World Indoor title.

ONE of two Russian airliners that crashed nearly simultaneously was brought down by a terrorist act officials said yesterday after finding traces of explosives in the plane's wreckage.

Suspicions grew today that terrorists were to blame for twin airline crashes, with a top official saying terrorism was the main theory and many Russians insisting the double disaster could not be explained by mere coincidence.

Russian officials are examining the wreckage of two crashed planes today in an effort to determine whether a terrorist attack caused the near-simultaneous disasters that killed all 89 people aboard.

RUSSIAN emergency workers last night searched heaps of twisted metal and tall grass amid fears a terrorist attack caused two airliners to plunge to earth within minutes of each other, killing all 89 people aboard.

A Russian passenger jet crashed and another apparently broke up in the air almost simultaneously after they took off from the same airport, raising fears of a double terrorist atrocity.

AN explosion at a military firing range in southwestern Russia killed two serviceman, and authorities said yesterday they believed the shell that blew up was left over from the Second World War.

The wife of a Russian general has confessed to killing her husband during a family quarrel.

Twenty more children in southern Russia sought hospital treatment on Sunday for symptoms of gas poisoning, bringing the total number of people affected by a leak at a Russian oil refinery to 93, officials said.

Albania 3 Russia 1

A senior intelligence aide to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov was jailed for 13 years for murder by a Russian court today.

RUSSIA strengthened their command of Group 10 after they scored twice in the first half and twice in the second when crushing Albania 4-1 last night.

A Briton has been arrested in southern Russia for travelling without a visa.

Nato chief Lord Robertson was flying east today for talks aimed at strengthening Russia’s relationship with the military alliance and devising ways of making joint decisions in the war against terror.