Russia needs stronger army, Putin says

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected one of Russia's new stealth fighter jets on Monday and said Russia needs a stronger military to protect it against foreign attempts to stoke conflict around its borders.


Less than two weeks before a presidential election in which he hopes for a resounding win, Putin visited Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a snow-swept city in Russia's Far East where military and civilian plane maker Sukhoi is a big employer.


He prefaced his trip with a newspaper article intended to burnish his image as a strong leader, saying Russia would spend 23 trillion rubles ($768 billion) over a decade to modernize the former Cold War superpower's armed forces.


"New regional and local wars are being sparked before our very eyes," Putin wrote in the article published on the front page of Russia's official gazette, Rossiiskaya Gazeta.


"There are attempts to provoke such conflicts in the immediate vicinity of the borders of Russia and our allies," he wrote ahead of the March 4 election which he is expected to win.

China, Russia stand firm in backing Assad

Russia, China and Iran showed support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday, days before an international meeting likely to pile more pressure on him to step down in the face of an increasingly bloody uprising.


Assad met a senior Russian politician in Damascus, who reiterated Moscow's support for his self-styled reform program and spoke out against any foreign intervention in the conflict, Russian and Syrian news agencies reported.


China accused western countries of stirring up civil war in Syria, and two Iranian warships docked at a Syrian naval base, underscoring rising international tensions over the near year-long crisis.

US-Russian space crew to take first ride on Soyuz

Two Russian cosmonauts making their first flights into space said Sunday they are counting on their U.S. crewmate when the three blast off together for the International Space Station.

American Ron Garan logged 13 days in space on a space shuttle mission in 2008, which makes him the most experienced member of the crew. At 49 he is also the oldest.

Garan and Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko, 46, and Alexander Samokutyayev, 40, will ride into space on a Russian Soyuz to be launched early Tuesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are expected to reach the orbiting station two days later.

"We've got Ron who's got this experience and he promised to help us with some issues and the feelings that we might encounter and that cannot be modeled on earth," Samokutyayev told reporters.

The launch is just a week shy of the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic journey into space as the first human in space. Tuesday's launch is from the same launch pad.

Israel hands Russia ownership of Jerusalem site

Israel is handing back ownership of a czarist-era landmark in the heart of Jerusalem to Russia, defusing a long-simmering dispute between the two countries right before Israel's leader visits Moscow.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has not disclosed the agenda for Thursday's visit but he is expected to urge Moscow not to sell sophisticated missiles to Syria and to support efforts to keep Iran's nuclear ambitions in check.

The return of ownership of the property known as Sergei's Courtyard, approved in 2008, appeared to be a goodwill gesture ahead of the visit.

The hewn stone building, built in 1890 to accommodate Russian pilgrims to the Holy Land, is a prominent edifice on the Jerusalem landscape with its soaring turret and lush garden. About a dozen workers were moving crates out of the building Monday and loading them into trucks.

"Israel is vacating Sergei's Courtyard in accordance with the understandings reached between Israel and the Russian Federation," an Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

The site was named for Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, a son of Czar Alexander III, and is part of a complex known as the Russian Compound. Israel bought most of it from the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, paying with oranges because it didn't have hard currency.

Israel seized control of it after the Soviet Union severed ties with the Jewish state following the 1967 Mideast war. The two countries restored ties in 1991 and negotiations to return the courtyard ownership to Russia began in the 1990s.

Gates hopes to expand US-Russian cooperation

Robert Gates has arrived in Russia for what's expected to be his final visit as U.S. Defense Secretary, and he's hoping to ease Moscow's worries over a missile defense shield in Europe and expand a military relationship that has grown dramatically since his Cold War days at the helm of the CIA.

Gates, who is expected to retire this summer, says Russian cooperation in the Afghanistan war and its support of U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea and Iran underscore cooperation that has dramatically evolved in recent years. Russia also abstained in the recent United Nations vote for military intervention in Libya, effectively allowing the allied assault to go forward.

The Pentagon chief will meet with Russian leaders and speak to a class of Naval Academy junior officers.

Russians fear radiation from Japan

Widespread fear that Japan's nuclear crisis could send radioactive fallout Russia's way is proving a nightmare to public officials in the Pacific regions, but a bonanza for merchants selling everything from face masks and iodine to vodka and wine.

Residents also are stocking up on dosimeters, a device for measuring the total absorbed dose from exposure to ionizing radiation, and seaweed, which contains natural iodine.

Health experts are insisting the radiation threat is minimal and warning that an excessive intake of iodine is not only useless but could even be harmful.

No increase in exposure levels in the region has been reported since the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant began releasing radiation. The plant is about 950 kilometers (600 miles) east of Vladivostok, a major port and the largest city in the Russian Far East.

Even if a reactor at Fukushima explodes, "there is no danger for Russia's Far East," the head of Russia's atomic energy agency, Sergei Kirienko, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Prevailing winds would likely send fallout from a blast out over the Pacific Ocean.

Player says he was beaten into breaking contract

A soccer player from Montenegro who fell out of favor with his Russian club says he was beaten into terminating his contract.

Nikola Nikezic played for Kuban Krasnodar in the Russian Premier League. He has written to the governing bodies of European and international soccer, contending he was beaten March 7 by two men in an office at the club's headquarters in Krasnodar in southern Russia.

Nikezic also says in a video message on a website that the men had guns and threatened to "make an invalid" out of him. He says he signed a contract termination out of fear for his life.

The 29-year-old forward says he has been told he's not wanted at Kuban. The team began its league season Sunday, losing 2-0 to Rubin Kazan.

Russian airliner crashes during test, killing 6

Russian news reports say an Antonov-148 airliner has crashed during a test flight, killing six people including two pilots from Myanmar.

The reports citing officials in the Emergencies Ministry and the Investigative Committee say the crash took place Saturday morning in the Belgorod region about 600 kilometers (350 miles) south of Moscow.

The Interfax-AVN military news agency said the Myanmar air force has ordered two An-148s. It was not immediately known if the plane that crashed was to be delivered to the country.

The An-148 is a regional high-wing jet with a maximum range of about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) and passenger capacity of 99.

There was no information on the cause of the crash. State airline Rossiya last year criticized the An-148 for door lock and engine problems.

Russia's FM knocks down no-fly zone for Libya

Russia's top diplomat ruled out the idea of creating a no-fly zone over Libya on Tuesday as embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi unleashed bombing raids, special forces and army troops in a desperate bid to retain power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the idea of imposing limits on Libyan air space as "superfluous" and said world powers must instead focus on fully using the sanctions the U.N. Security Council approved over the weekend.

Leaders in the U.S., Europe and Australia have suggested the military tactic - used successfully in northern Iraq and Bosnia - to prevent Gadhafi from bombing his own people. But Russia's consent is required as a veto-wielding member of the Security Council.

Russian newswires quoted a Kremlin source Tuesday saying Gadhafi must step down, since by using force against civilians he has become a "political corpse." Still, Russian NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin also cautioned against moving militarily against Gadhafi without U.N. authorization.