France said Friday it regretted a Russian lack of "transparency" following the suspected poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is in a medically-induced coma in a Berlin hospital.

Russian military vehicles and attack helicopters surrounded two US armored cars in a tense confrontation in northeastern Syria Wednesday, leaving US troops injured, according to the White House.

Moscow has dubbed its new coronavirus vaccine "Sputnik V" after the Soviet satellite, the head of the country's sovereign wealth fund said Tuesday, after Russia declared itself the first country to develop a vaccine.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund which finances the vaccine project, said Phase 3 trials would start on Wednesday, industrial production was expected from September and that 20 countries had pre-ordered more than a billion doses.

Huge anti-government demonstrations erupted in Russia's Far East on Saturday over the arrest of a popular governor who was replaced this week by a Kremlin appointee who never lived in the fraught region.

Tens of thousands of people rallied Saturday in the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk in new protests in support of a popular governor and in a rare show of defiance against the Kremlin.

Wildfires raging in Siberia in record summer temperatures have decreased considerably over the past week, Russia's forest service said Saturday, as it battles blazes by cloud seeding and explosives.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk on Saturday in support of a popular local governor arrested this week for allegedly ordering several murders.

India announced Monday that it had logged nearly 700,000 coronavirus cases, taking it past Russia to become the world's third-hardest-hit nation in the global pandemic.

Russia on Saturday said that it recorded more than 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, a toll that is still far lower than in other countries with major outbreaks.

The Kremlin on Thursday hailed as a "triumph" overwhelming backing in a national vote on constitutional reforms to extend President Vladimir Putin's rule.