Russia's U.N. envoy said Wednesday that Moscow opposes a U.N. Security Council Resolution demanding greater humanitarian access in Syria to those in urgent need of food and medical supplies.

Since negotiations between Syria and world powers halted Friday without concrete results, Western nations and some Arab countries backing the Syrian opposition have drafted a text they hope to bring before the council this week, diplomats said.

Russia should repeal its controversial legislation banning gay "propaganda" because it is fueling discrimination and violence against young homosexuals and their families, the U.N.'s child rights watchdog said Wednesday.

Rather than protecting children, the laws "encourage stigmatization of and discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) persons, including children and children living in LGBT families," said Maria Herczog of the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry says several dozen railcars carrying gas have derailed and caught fire northeast of Moscow, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of local resident.

The ministry said that the accident occurred Wednesday at a railway station in the city of Kirov, about 800 kilometers (some 500 miles) northeast of Moscow, when 32 cars loaded with gas condensate derailed and caught fire. It said no one was hurt.

Syria's opposition leader met Russia's top diplomat on Tuesday in a bid to persuade Moscow to push its ally Damascus to agree to a transitional government for the war-scarred nation.

Syrian National Coalition chief Ahmad Jarba met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after an inconclusive 10-day peace conference in Geneva ended on Friday without a commitment from Damascus to attend a new round of negotiations set for February 10.

Michael McFaul, the outspoken U.S. ambassador to Russia who has frequently clashed with the Kremlin, announced Tuesday that he would be leaving the country after just two years.

His announcement that he would also leave the U.S. administration comes amid a new spike in tensions between Moscow and Washington over a litany of issues ranging from arms to human rights to pro-Western protests in Ukraine.

Syria's opposition leader met Russia's top diplomat on Tuesday in a bid to persuade Moscow to push its ally Damascus to agree to a transitional government for the war-scarred nation.

The talks between Syrian National Coalition chief Ahmad Jarba and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came after an inconclusive 10-day peace conference in Geneva concluded on Friday without a commitment from Damascus to attend a new round of negotiations set for February 10.

A Russian court on Monday handed down long jail sentences to three men who stabbed and kicked a man they believed to be gay and then set him on fire.

The men, all from the same village in the region of Kamchatka in far eastern Russia, committed the murder last May because they were "convinced of the non-traditional sexual orientation of their fellow villager," regional prosecutors said in a statement, using a euphemism for being gay.

Russia on Monday urged Ukraine's opposition to stop issuing "threats and ultimatums" after it appealed for Western aid and urged President Viktor Yanukovych to accept curbs on power.

The statement from Moscow, which has publicly supported Yanukovych in his confrontation with the opposition, came after Ukrainian protest leaders rallied tens of thousands in central Kiev on Sunday.

A rifle-wielding student killed a teacher and a policeman on Monday in a Moscow school hostage drama that unfolded amid security jitters preceding this week's Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Witnesses said the suspect -- described as a "straight-A" pupil named Sergei Gordeyev -- charged into School No. 263 and ordered a security guard to lead him to a specific classroom in the two-storey building on the northern outskirts of Moscow.

Thousands of demonstrators marched through Moscow on Sunday to demand Russia free eight prisoners jailed after a 2012 protest against President Vladimir Putin.

There was heavy security for the march, with hundreds of police lining the route from Pushkin Square to Turgenev Square, while a helicopter hovered overhead.