Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will head to Moscow Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Iran's nuclear program and on regional issues including Syria, an official said.

"Zarif will meet the Russian president as well as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his one-day trip to Moscow on Thursday," Mehdi Sanaei, Iran's ambassador to Russia, told the official IRNA news agency.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem will visit Russia ahead of the Geneva 2 peace talks on the crisis due to begin in Switzerland later this month, Damascus's ambassador to Moscow said Monday.

"He will be in Moscow prior to Geneva 2," Riyad Haddad told the Interfax news agency, without specifying the date.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the legendary AK-47 assault rifle, turned to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church shortly before his death to express fears he was personally guilty for those it killed.

Kalashnikov, who died in December at the age of 94, in April wrote a lengthy emotional letter to Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, Izvestia, a pro-Kremlin daily, reported on Monday.

An estimated 50,000 pro-Western Ukrainians massed on Sunday in the heart of Kiev amid swelling anger over the bloody beating of prominent former minister turned opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko.

The 49-year-old member of jailed ex-Premier Yulia Tymoshenko's cabinet was transferred out of intensive care on Saturday evening after being attacked by truncheon-wielding police during a small protest the night before.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri held talks Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the French capital Paris, where the latter was holding preparatory meetings for the Geneva 2 Syria peace conference.

According to a statement issued by Hariri's office, the meeting was also attended by Russian Deputy FM Mikhail Bogdanov, Russian Foreign Ministry director of Mideast dept. Sergey Vershinin and the ex-PM's advisers Nader Hariri and George Shaaban.

France is exerting efforts with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in order to highlight to Lebanese leaderships the dangers of failing to hold the presidential elections, reported the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa daily on Sunday.

It revealed that a French diplomatic delegation is expected to visit Lebanon soon in order to discuss with Christian leaders the upcoming elections.

Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi on Saturday defended Tehran's "right" to carry out research on advanced centrifuges, media reported.

Iran and world powers agreed Friday on how to implement a landmark deal reached in November on containing Tehran's nuclear program, but it must still be approved by each country before it can take effect.

Russian diplomats told a top visiting U.S. dignitary on Friday that Moscow would continue backing Syrian President Bashar Assad's campaign against rebel forces despite peace talks due later this month.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman's visit came ahead of a crunch meeting in Paris on Monday between her boss John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that will focus on Moscow's push to give Syrian ally Iran a formal seat at the so-called Geneva 2 conference.

Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was freed by Moscow last month after a decade in jail, has traveled from Switzerland to Israel on a private visit, his spokesman said Friday.

Khodorkovsky, who was in Switzerland with his family, "is on a short private visit" in Israel, his spokesman David Krikler told AFP, confirming news reports.

Western countries in addition to Russia and China are expected to exert more pressure on Lebanese parties to elect a new president on time and avoid a vacuum, Western diplomatic sources said.

The sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published on Friday that the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China are among the countries pushing for parliament's election of the president starting March 25.