MOSCOW (Reuters) – The United States and Russia clashed over Libya Tuesday, with Moscow advocating a ceasefire and U.S. defense chief Robert Gates saying some Russians had swallowed Muammar Gaddafi’s “lies” about civilian deaths.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, after talks with Gates at his residence outside Moscow, accused coalition forces of carrying out “indiscriminate” air strikes.

VOTKINSK, Russia (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin likened the call for armed intervention in Libya to the medieval crusades Monday in the first major remarks from Russia since a Western coalition began airstrikes.

In some of his harshest criticism of the United States since President Barack Obama began a campaign to improve ties, Putin also compared the intervention with the Bush-era invasion of Iraq and said it showed Russia is right to boost its military.

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday proposed freeing up energy for Japan by increasing gas supplies to Europe and offered Japanese companies a slice of Siberia’s gas industry.

Putin, paramount leader of the world’s biggest energy producer, offered Japanese companies stakes in two Siberian gas fields which have total reserves of about 3.2 trillion cubic meters (tcm), more than the world’s annual gas consumption.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Japan must cool and isolate the nuclear fuel at its crippled atomic power station before trying to encase the reactors in a Chernobyl-style concrete sarcophagus, nuclear experts believe.

Japanese authorities agree it is still too early to talk about long-term measures and cooling the six reactors and associated fuel-storage pools at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex comes first.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Japan should concentrate its efforts on restoring power to the Fukushima nuclear plant rather than trying to cool its reactors by dropping water from helicopters, a Russian nuclear expert said on Thursday.

“One can only put out forest fires like this, by pouring water from helicopters. It is not clear where this water is falling,” Gennady Pshakin from the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in the city of Obninsk said by telephone.

MINSK, March 15 (Reuters) – Belarus is seeking $3 billion
in loans from Russia and an emergency fund that links ex-Soviet
republics, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on
Tuesday.

Kudrin, speaking during a visit to Minsk with Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin, said the loans would be conditioned on
structural reforms to its Soviet-style centrally controlled
economy and on privatisation.

MOSCOW, March 10 (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday it may
drop plans to lay an underwater section of the South Stream gas
pipeline and build a liquefied natural gas plant instead,
citing risks posed by new European energy rules.

An Energy Ministry statement said “the possibility of
construction of an LNG plant on the Black Sea coast is being
considered as an alternative to the underwater part of the
South Stream pipeline.”

MOSCOW, March 9 (Reuters) – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on
Wednesday ordered an investigation into the possibility of
building an LNG plant on the Black Sea coast, casting new doubt
on the viability of Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline.

Putin has backed the $21.5 billion South Stream link to
transport up to 63 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to central
and southern Europe. Russia plans to launch the pipeline in 2015
while the LNG option has never been discussed.

MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) – Russia’s top telecoms providers
have agreed to share their next generation mobile network,
aiming to tap surging demand for fast data access on the go at a
lower investment cost.

MegaFon, MTS (MBT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Vimpelcom (VIP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) — the leading
mobile phone operators — together with long-distance call
provider Rostelecom (RTKM.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will share a fourth-generation
(4G) network which will be built by smaller rival Yota, its
chief executive Denis Sverdlov said on Thursday.

TAMBOV, Russia, March 2 (Reuters) – Russia, worried by
soaring food prices and a shortage of grain to feed its
livestock, may extend its ban on grain exports until the end of
the year, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said.

“We are working on potential forecasts that involve keeping
the ban in place until the end of the year,” Zubkov told
reporters on Wednesday. “We see what is happening on the food
markets, and we don’t see any improvement.”