MOSCOW (Reuters) – Olga Lazareva, a communist working as a polling station official in Russia’s parliamentary election, says she woke a few hours before the polls opened to find her apartment door had been glued shut.

The glue, she said, was meant to delay her arrival on Sunday at the voting station in Tula, south of Moscow, where her approval was needed to confirm ballot boxes were empty and a free and fair election could begin. She managed to get out by calling relatives who forced open the door.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Several thousand protesters took to the streets on Monday to demand an end to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule after voters cut his party’s parliamentary majority in an election that was condemned as unfair by European monitors.

Police said they detained 300 people in Moscow, where they confronted a crowd of 3,000 to 5,000 chanting “Revolution!” and “Russia without Putin” in one of the biggest opposition protests in the capital in years.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Dmitry Medvedev urged Russians on Friday to vote “for the future” by electing a strong parliament to maintain stability and said all parties had been treated equally, despite opposition complaints of foul play.

Medvedev is leading Vladimir Putin’s United Russia into Sunday’s election, but made no direct reference to the party in a pre-election address in his capacity as head of state, although the party’s slogan is: “The future belongs to us”.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian officers have been ordered to wake soldiers with “pleasant music” before they go to vote on Sunday in parliamentary elections, and to encourage them to watch state television.

Russia’s one-million strong military is a traditional stronghold for ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party, which is expected to see its parliamentary majority cut and will be counting on the military vote.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Jonibek Kosimov had been missing for nearly a week when his cousin found his body in the morgue. Kosimov, 24, had been discovered in the early autumn sunlight of a forest clearing near the monastery city of Sergiev Posad outside Moscow. His throat had been slit, his face slashed by 21 knife wounds.

Turning to relatives and friends — migrant laborers, mostly — the dead man’s cousin Shaukatulloh Makhmudov collected the nearly 25,000 roubles ($810) he needed to pay the morgue and send his cousin home. Three days later, on September 10, the corpse was laid in a zinc-lined box, loaded into the cargo compartment of a Boeing 757 and flown to the family’s native Tajikistan, on the southern fringe of the former Soviet Union.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Jonibek Kosimov had been missing for nearly a week when his cousin found his body in the morgue. Kosimov, 24, had been discovered in the early autumn sunlight of a forest clearing near the monastery city of Sergiev Posad outside Moscow. His throat had been slit, his face slashed by 21 knife wounds.

Turning to relatives and friends — migrant laborers, mostly — the dead man’s cousin Shaukatulloh Makhmudov collected the nearly 25,000 roubles ($810) he needed to pay the morgue and send his cousin home. Three days later, on September 10, the corpse was laid in a zinc-lined box, loaded into the cargo compartment of a Boeing 757 and flown to the family’s native Tajikistan, on the southern fringe of the former Soviet Union.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia is sending a flotilla of warships to its naval base in Syria in a show of force which suggests Moscow is willing to defend its interests in the strife-torn country as international pressure mounts on President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Arab League sanctions and French calls for the establishment of humanitarian zones in Syria have increased international pressure on Assad to end bloodshed that the United Nations says has killed 3,500 people during nine months of protests against his rule.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin accepted his ruling party’s nomination on Sunday to return to Russia’s presidency, while accusing foreigners of funding his political opponents in a reminder of the anti-Western rhetoric that characterised his years in power.

Putin, president from 2000-2008 and now prime minister, is expected to easily recapture the presidency in an election in March. But opinion polls indicate a parliamentary vote in a week could loosen his United Russia party’s domination of politics.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin accepted his ruling party’s nomination on Sunday to return to Russia’s presidency, while accusing foreigners of funding his political opponents in a reminder of the anti-Western rhetoric that characterized his years in power.

Putin, president from 2000-2008 and now prime minister, is expected to easily recapture the presidency in an election in March. But opinion polls indicate a parliamentary vote in a week could loosen his United Russia party’s domination of politics.

MOSCOW/ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – Russia and Iran warned the West against a military strike on the Islamic Republic on Monday, saying an attack targeting its nuclear program would lead to civilian casualties and create new threats to global security.

The separate remarks by foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Ali Akbar Salehi of Iran coincided with speculation about a potential Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites ahead of the release of a U.N. watchdog report expected to cast more light on suspected military aspects to Iran’s nuclear activity.