Latvia, which has taken over the rotating EU presidency, on Wednesday said Russia seemed more open to a negotiated solution over the conflict in Ukraine, raising the prospect of an easing of sanctions against Moscow.

"There is a kind of an opening we can use," said Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, adding that Russia's economy was suffering from the fallout of Western sanctions combined with falling oil prices.

U.S. President Barack Obama led global condemnation of the shooting at a French magazine on Wednesday which left 12 people dead, with world leaders and media groups branding it an act of terror and an attack on free speech.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Queen Elizabeth II also offered their sympathy, after masked men armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles opened fire at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

China and Venezuela will step up co-operation this year, Presidents Xi Jinping and Nicolas Maduro said in Beijing Wednesday as falling oil prices threaten the Latin American nation's economy.

Maduro was widely expected to ask for a new cash injection to shore up oil-rich Venezuela's finances during his visit as elections loom and a faltering economy could hurt his left-wing party's chances.

A Russian court on Tuesday refused to take legal action after top opposition leader Alexei Navalny defiantly cut short his house arrest by snipping off his security bracelet.

The prominent Kremlin critic was convicted of fraud in a controversial trial late last month and handed a 3 1/2 year suspended sentence. He argues he is now free but the authorities say he must stay under house arrest until the sentence enters force.

Ukrainian police on Monday launched a terror probe into a blast in the government-controlled port of Odessa after an explosion outside a building housing a soldiers' support center.

Local authorities said the late Sunday explosion in the city of one million caused no injuries but shattered windows in the office of volunteers helping soldiers fighting pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

French President Francois Hollande said Monday that biting Western sanctions against Russia should be lifted if progress were made in resolving the Ukraine crisis.

"I think the sanctions must stop now. They must be lifted if there is progress. If there is no progress the sanctions will remain," he said during a wide-ranging two-hour interview with France Inter radio station.

Tougher sanctions may destabilize the situation further in Russia and plunge the country into chaos, German deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned in a newspaper interview on Sunday.

"The goal was never to push Russia politically and economically into chaos," Gabriel told the Bild am Sonntag.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov reportedly had a stormy meeting with Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last month.

The Saudi al-Watan daily on Sunday quoted sources as saying that during his talks with Nasrallah, Bogdanov proposed the possibility of naming a new Syrian president to lead a transitional government.

Thousands of Hungarians protested Friday at what they see as the country's move towards Russia in the latest demonstration against the government of controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The crowd, estimated to be over 5,000 by an Agence France-Presse photographer, brandished placards condemning Orban, whose support suffered a plunge in polls at the end of 2014 despite securing three election wins earlier in the year.

A torch-lit march held in Kiev to honor a controversial anti-Soviet resistance leader shows Ukraine is following in the footsteps of the Nazis, a senior Russian foreign ministry official said Friday.

"Torch-lit marches in Ukraine demonstrate that it is continuing to move along the path of the Nazis! And this is in the center of civilized Europe!" Konstantin Dolgov, the foreign ministry's human rights envoy, wrote on Twitter.