Russia's opposition to new cuts in greenhouse gases means all of the world's top four emitters are against making quick reductions, complicating plans for a new UN climate treaty by the end of 2009. "The positions ... are just the tip of the iceberg of the problems ahead," said Bill Hare, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The United States, China, Russia and India are the top emitters.

Russia has suggested that Caspian nations impose a five-year ban on fishing for sturgeon, prized for caviar, to save the dwindling stocks from extinction. "We are ready to renounce sturgeon

Russia will not accept binding caps on its greenhouse gas emissions under a new climate regime, currently being negotiated to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, top officials said on Monday. Kyoto puts a cap on the average, annual greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-12 for some 37 industrialised countries, including Russia. But former communist countries are well within their emissions targets, which are compared to 1990 levels, because their industries and carbon emissions subsequently collapsed after they struggled to adapt to free markets.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda focused on a new global climate change initiative and a decades-old dispute over a group of Pacific islands when he met Russia's two leaders on Saturday. Japanese officials had said Fukuda would urge Russia to accelerate talks aimed at resolving the territorial row over the islands, a running sore in relations that has prevented the two states from signing a peace treaty ending World War Two.

Opposition protesters marched through the capital of Belarus on Saturday to mark the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and denounce plans to build an atomic power station in the ex-Soviet state. Belarus was the country most affected by the world's worst nuclear accident and the anniversary is traditionally the year's biggest rally for opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko, accused in the West of violating fundamental human rights.

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicated during last July's G-8 Summit in St Petersburg that he wanted to force the pace of Indo-Russian cooperation. The PM remarked that, "The economic pillar of our strategic relationship needs attention, as at present it is not as strong as it should be.' He, and others, have also noted that both economies have been logging up good rates of growth, something that could lay the foundation for more substantive economic cooperation between the two.

Russian oil output in 2003 was increasing at such a swift pace even Saudi Arabia worried about upstart energy companies - including Yukos and Sibneft - then posting production gains of more than 20 per cent. But from 2004 the Moscow government changed its tax regime and began to take over privately held assets, including Yukos, and so Saudi Arabia's fears proved short-lived.

Russia's Gazprom took further steps to strengthen its hold on natural gas supplies to Europe on Thursday, signing a joint venture with Libya and saying it was in preliminary talks on a multibillion dollar project to pipe Nigerian gas to Europe across the Sahara. News of the two projects came as Vladimir Putin, Russian president, became the first Russian leader since 1985 to visit Libya. According to the country's official news agency, Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi said during talks with Mr Putin he supported the idea of forming an Opec-style group of gas-exporting countries.

Even as it has increased the state's role in the economy, Vladimir Putin's authoritarian administration has presided over one of the world's biggest liberalisations

Five years ago Russia's rapidly growing oil exports were seen as the cure for the US and Europe's addiction to Middle East oil, international oil companies' most exciting potential source of revenue and the only thing that could quench China's insatiable new thirst.