YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Maxim Petlin heads a prominent political party in a major Russian province straddling the Ural mountains, but he will not be on the ballot for regional parliamentary elections on Sunday. His Western-leaning Yabloko party was barred on technical grounds, a move Petlin believes was aimed at keeping Kremlin critics out of the vote -- one of hundreds of ...

A sumo wrestler ripped a cash machine out of a Moscow store on Friday, walking off with the bulky 90-kilogram (200-pound) machine on his shoulders, police said. The man and an accomplice walked into a Moscow shopping mall and detached a cash machine containing 25,000 rubles (838 dollars, 613 euros), Moscow city police said in a statement. A shop ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urged Sweden Tuesday to extradite two men it says are Chechen separatists and accuses of involvement in killings and kidnappings. Sweden refused to extradite the Chechen suspects Aslan Adayev and Magomed Uspayev as recently as 2008, a refusal Russia denounced as a "political offence" at the time. At a joint news conference with visiting ...

Ukraine's new President Viktor Yanukovych vowed Friday to end years of acrimony with giant neighbour Russia, as he paid his first visit to Moscow since taking office last week. "This five-year period has given us the opportunity to open a new page in our relations," Yanukovych said, referring to his five-year term, following talks with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry ...