European Union observers in Georgia say they will move their offices closer to a volatile area around the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Georgian and separatist South Ossetian authorities are accusing each other of opening fire across the line of control in the ex-Soviet republic.

A day after he sent Russian forces into South Ossetia to repel the Georgian army, President Dmitry Medvedev responded to mounting Western criticism by saying the truth was on Russia's side and that, eventually, it would become apparent to the whole world.

That day has finally come, and Russia is vindicated. Its story has not changed and is holding up, while Saakashvili's version is collapsing. Medvedev's credibility is rising.

Russia has evidence that citizens from NATO member states including the United States and Turkey fought for Georgia in the five-day August war, Russia's top investigator said on Monday.

Warships, nuclear power, arms sales and perhaps cooperation on oil prices -- Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev is in Venezuela this week with an alarming sounding list to wave under Washington's nose.

The European Union is to launch an inquiry into the causes of the Russia-Georgia conflict, papers seen Friday show, amid growing recriminations against Tbilisi over its role in fanning the flames

Two Russian strategic bombers are conducting an aerial patrol over the Arctic Ocean, Interfax news agency reported Friday.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visits to Venezuela and Cuba during a week-long trip to Latin America look set to irk Washington, highlighting a foreign policy challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama.

His trip to Venezuela, a key buyer of Russian arms, coincides with the two countries' first joint naval exercise in the Caribbean -- traditionally viewed by the United States as its backyard.

During his stay in Cuba, the Russian leader is likely to demonstrate Moscow's commitment to renew a Cold War-era alliance with Havana, abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The recent US/Israeli attempt to foment war with Russia in South Ossetia, and the upcoming “testing” of Obama are acts of desperation by a fading global empire. The American era is over. All that remains is the dispensation of America’s remaining nuclear resources in such a way as to reap the greatest advantage for America’s corporate owners in the great repositioning that is now taking place.

Russia's resurgence as a strategic actor and a new cold war player is widely discussed in the United Kingdom and Asia. Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during his presidency made unbelievable economic and military progress. In UK intellectual circle, the resurgence of Russia in the international arena is considered a big issue of the near future. Russia's new policy direction - and particularly its nascent interest in alternative energy - is important because Russia is such a large energy exporter.

The Russian invasion of Georgia this summer sparked an international uproar and led many to predict a new Cold War with Russia.

After gaining exclusive access to South Ossetia, Tim Whewell has discovered evidence Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region in August.

The Dmitry Medvedev that made his first appearance in the U.S. capital as Russia's president was not the same man Russians usually see at home.

He was confident, even charming, in reaching out Saturday in a spirit of cooperation to the incoming administration of Barack Obama.

Russia, which is fiercely opposed to NATO's expansion toward its borders, suspended its compliance with the CFE treaty last December but remains a signatory.

Moscow says the treaty, designed to limit battlefield weapons, such as tanks and armoured vehicles, on either side of the old Iron Curtain, is a Cold War relic which gives too much scope for an enlarged NATO to beef up its forces.

Despite objections by Russia, the outgoing head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency urged President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to stick to the Bush administration's plans to place missile defenses in Eastern Europe.

The United States said Wednesday that Russia has not responded to fresh US proposals to try to ease its concerns over US missile shield plans despite reports from Moscow suggesting it rejects them.

An unnamed Kremlin official quoted by Russian news agencies said Russia cannot accept the proposals as they contain nothing new and will take up negotiations with the next administration of Barack Obama.

However, US arms control negotiator John Rood told AFP that no formal response has been received.

So, Vladimir Putin was right: It was Georgia that started the war with Russia, and once again it was President Bush who got caught in a lie. As the New York Times reported last week, "Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the long-standing Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression."

Readiness of the West to admit that the August conflict in South Ossetia was started by the Georgian troops, will assist in establishment of relations with Russia, whilst will not change opinion of the Western community on Russia’s disproportionate answer to actions of Georgia.

“The problem is whether Russia proportionally or disproportionately responded toward Georgia’s launching military actions,” Leon Aron, an American political scientist, said.

US President-elect Barack Obama has not given a commitment to go ahead with plans to build part of a US missile defence system in Poland, an aide says.

Russian companies will drill for oil and natural gas on and off the island of Cuba. A standing Russian credit line to Cuba for buying Russian wheat and cars is now extended to until 2011. Russia will build new rail lines on Cuban territory. There will also be joint projects in aircraft- and shipbuilding.

To the extent that he focused on Russia at all, Barack Obama’s attention was concentrated primarily on the need to keep Soviet nuclear weapons stockpiles out of the hands of terrorists.

The U.S. State Department said Friday the Georgian attack in South Ossetia last August was a mistake, but that it did not justify Russia's large-scale intervention. The comments follow a critical newspaper assessment of the Tbilisi government's role in the crisis.

Russia hopes for constructive talks with the next U.S. administration on Washington's planned missile defense system in Europe, Russian media quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Sunday.

A Russian deputy foreign minister said separately, in an interview with Interfax news agency, that Moscow would not carry out a threat to deploy tactical missiles near Poland if Washington scrapped its plans to deploy its missile system in Europe.

Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country’s bloody five-day war with Russia in August.

Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds.

Russia will study Washington's proposals on an anti-missile system and on how to find a replacement for a key nuclear arms reduction treaty, Interfax quoted a Russian foreign ministry source as saying on Friday.

The United States has sent Moscow proposals for a follow-on to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and on ways to ease Moscow's concerns over the anti-missile system that Washington wants to deploy in eastern Europe.

"We have received these proposals and we will study them," Interfax news agency quoted the unidentified source as saying.

Russia will deploy short-range missiles near Poland to counter U.S. military plans in Eastern Europe, President Dmitry Medvedev warned Wednesday, setting a combative tone that clashed with global goodwill over Barack Obama's election.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticised the United States in his first annual address to the nation on Wednesday, blaming "selfish" U.S. foreign policy for Moscow's war with Georgia.

Georgia used cluster bombs that malfunctioned and fell into towns and villages, killing several of Georgia's own civilians during its summer war with Russia, according to new research by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based humanitarian organization. Georgia called that conclusion "impossible."

The group found that Russia also made extensive use of cluster bombs during the brief war. U.S. intelligence assessments during the conflict also found that both sides were using cluster bombs, a senior Pentagon official said.

Medvedev says move is response to U.S. plan for defense shield in Europe

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has congratulated Barack Obama on his election victory and is hoping for constructive dialogue with the incoming U.S. president.

Russia's permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Georgia has deployed troops along its border.

Libya and Russia signed a civil nuclear cooperation deal Saturday, Tripoli's foreign minister said, as Moamer Kadhafi visited Moscow for talks he said could help restore "geopolitical equilibrium".

The ruble may have shed 10 percent of its value in two months, but both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are clinging onto their rubles in favor of the U.S. dollar.

The leaders of the West must recognize that our current strategy towards Russia is failing. Our policies have failed to contribute to the democratic Russia we wished for and the people of this great country deserve after all the suffering they have endured. It is time for us to rethink how and to what extent we engage with Putin's Russia and to put ourselves unambiguously on the side of democratic forces in Russia.

Russia's Foreign Ministry denied on Friday claims by the U.S. defense secretary that large amounts of Russian nuclear weapons had been stolen or misplaced.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned today that the European Union monitors in the buffer zone between Georgia and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are “playing with fire” in ignoring a reported upsurge in violence in the region. Lavrov reminded the EU today at a meeting with Latvia’s Foreign Minister that it was to be the guarantor “of the non-use of force” against the newly independent regions.

The Russian government blocked Google from acquiring contextual advertising firm Begun.

Google would have paid Russian portal Rambler $140 million for its subsidiary, but Russian authorities say Google failed to provide "documented information about individuals that may influence the business group Google."

It did not take the clash between Russia and Georgia to reveal that relations between Russia and the West have taken a bad turn. They have been deteriorating since the mid-1990s, when the decision was taken to expand NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact states. At the time of that decision, George F. Kennan, the most eminent American diplomat of his time, said this could be the most disastrous mistake made in American foreign policy in decades. He erred only in underestimating the comparative scale of the blunders that would follow, in the George W. Bush administration.

The United States and Russia sent their top military officers to this neutral capital for an unannounced meeting Tuesday to seek and define common ground and to try to move bilateral relations back on track, American officials said.

Russia-backed separatist authorities in South Ossetia on Saturday ordered their soldiers to return fire if shot at by Georgian forces following an alleged shooting incident earlier in the day.

Are the Russian oligarchs going bust?

Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000 vowing to destroy Russia's oligarchs ``as a class.'' Within two years, he'd driven two into exile and imprisoned another.

Now, he may use the global markets meltdown to finish the job.

“Prime Minister Putin visits Central Asia several times a year, and his personal diplomacy is highly important for Russia’s success. NATO and EU leaders did not find time, energy and the political capital that the West needed to establish its relations with the region,” the senator said during his appearance at the National Defense University in Washington.

Iceland moved to shore up its ravaged economy by slashing borrowing costs on Wednesday and officials pursued efforts to get help from Russia in tackling the worst financial crisis in the island's history.

The International Court of Justice plans to rule Wednesday on whether to order Russia to take immediate steps to halt what Georgia calls ethnic cleansing in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The new mantra of the ruling American elites, of the heads of the two branches (Republican & Democrat) of the One Party Police State is to embargo Russia as punishment for Georgia's war of aggression and extermination upon the Ossetian people.

With socialism defeated in the lands of the former Soviet Union but now triumphant on Wall Street and Washington, a new cold war is just what the doctor ordered to get the war economy moving, as everything else comes to a grinding halt, and to divert peoples' attention away from their own increasing misery. From the perspective of our rulers, it's far better to direct all that anger at a foreign enemy – when, of course, the real enemy is right here at home…

The 67 percent decline in Russian equities this year resembles the U.S. stock market crash of 1929 because of the damaging effect of highly leveraged investors, the head of Russia's Micex Stock Exchange said.

Russian stocks have suffered three days of declines greater than 14 percent in the last month, spurred in part by leveraged investors reducing their holdings after margin calls from their brokers. Speculators making bets with borrowed money also contributed to the 1929 stock-market crash in the U.S.

The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has called on European leaders to create a new world order that minimises the role of the US.

"When I came out from hiding, thanking God that the Russians had saved our lives, I was dismayed by the reaction of the international media to what had happened. There was nothing about Ossetian deaths and the unprovoked horrors inflicted by Saakashvili's military. It made my heart sick."

"The truth has been crushed by Georgia's powerful public relations machine as mercilessly as Georgian tanks rolled over the defenseless civilians of Tskhinvali."