Russian President Vladimir Putin will seek to "recharge" ties when he visits India Wednesday for a one-day summit, promising deals on natural gas and new nuclear power units for the energy-starved country.

India -- the world's third largest oil importer behind the United States and China -- has been buying oil mainly from the Middle East but the region's volatility has prompted the government to consider other options.

The Nigerian authorities on Sunday said they had detained a Russian cargo plane carrying military equipment in the north Nigerian city of Kano.

The country's defense chiefs announced on Twitter that the Antonov aircraft was held pending an investigation into its provenance and what it was carrying.

A delegation of Syrian dissidents tolerated by President Bashar Assad's regime will travel to Russia this week for meetings with officials, days after government members discussed a new peace process there.

The meeting with Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov would include talks "on a political solution, the role of Syria-based opponents and (U.N. envoy) Staffan De Mistura's initiative," said delegation member Maher Merhej.

French President Francois Hollande on Saturday became the first European leader to travel to Russia in an attempt to defuse the standoff with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, as Kiev announced a fresh round of peace talks next week.

Hollande's meeting with Putin in the diplomatic terminal of an airport outside the capital came as the conflict in eastern Ukraine has plunged relations between the West and Moscow to a post-Cold War low.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov accompanied by Russian ambassador Alexander Zasypkin held several meetings with Lebanese politicians on Saturday, the National News Agency reported.

Bogdanov met with Free Patirotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun but he left without giving any statement, the agency said.

Georgia accused Russia on Friday of planning to broker a deal with the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia that would cement Moscow's dominance over another former Soviet territory.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin inked a "strategic partnership" agreement with Georgia's rebel Abkhazia region that increased Moscow's military, economic and diplomatic clout in the pro-Russian enclave.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov called Friday for endorsing the principles of the Baabda Declaration in all countries in the Middle East, as he declined to reveal whether or not he discussed the issue of the stalled presidential vote with the Lebanese officials.

“We encourage holding the presidential election and we laud the role of the Lebanese army and security forces in the fight against terrorism,” Bogdanov said after meeting former president Michel Suleiman.

The European Union isn't a "sanctions geyser" and its restrictions imposed on Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crisis should be "proportional and reversible," Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni said Friday.

"The EU is not a sanctions geyser, sanctions are an instrument to a political solution," he said during a meeting in Rome with the foreign media.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday warned France its reputation was on the line over the delivery of a controversial warship to Russia, which has been delayed due to the conflict in Ukraine.

His comments came as Paris warned the two Mistral-class helicopter carriers it built for Russia may never be delivered, with a lasting ceasefire in war-torn eastern Ukraine so far proving elusive.

Ukraine's foreign minister said Friday that his war-torn country needed a "real" ceasefire, a day after Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels agreed on a fresh truce starting on December 9.

Ukraine needs "a ceasefire not in name, but ceasefire in substance," Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Switzerland on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) focused on the crisis in his country.