Ukraine has avoided bankruptcy and social collapse thanks to a "historic" deal with Russia for Moscow to buy $15 billion of Ukrainian bonds and slash gas prices, its prime minister said Wednesday.

"What would have awaited Ukraine (without the deal)? The answer is clear -- bankruptcy and social collapse," Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told parliament. "This would have been the New Year's present for the people of Ukraine," he added ironically.

The White House said Tuesday an economic deal between Russia and the Ukraine does not address the concerns of Ukrainian protesters calling for an accord to move closer to the European Union.

The agreement, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to buy $15 billion of Ukrainian bonds and slash its gas bill by a third, "will not address the concerns of those who have gathered in public protest across Ukraine," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

The Russian lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved in a first reading a Kremlin-sponsored bill on amnesty that could see the jailed members of the Pussy Riot band released early.

But under the proposed measure there would be no clemency for the former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and many of the opposition demonstrators accused of using violence against police at a protest a day before President Vladimir Putin's inauguration last year.

Ukraine's embattled President Viktor Yanukovych sought Tuesday a multi-billion-dollar lifeline from Russia's Vladimir Putin that could relieve a brewing economic crisis but also stoke huge pro-EU protests roiling Kiev streets.

The ex-Soviet nation of 46 million has been at the heart of a furious diplomatic tug of war since Yanukovych's shock decision last month to ditch a landmark EU partnership agreement and seek closer ties with its traditional master Russia.

Russia and western nations clashed over who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria at a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday.

"Acrimonious" talks were held at the closed meeting on a U.N. investigation into chemical weapons attacks during the 33-month-old civil war, according to France's U.N. ambassador Gerard Araud.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday sought to reassure their Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that a possible partnership deal with Ukraine would not undermine Moscow's interests.

At talks with Lavrov over lunch in Brussels, "we made it perfectly clear that Ukraine, after years of negotiations... should sign" a landmark political and economic deal with the 28-nation bloc, said the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

Russia has moved nuclear-capable Iskander missiles closer to Europe's borders in response to the U..S.-led deployment of a disputed air defense shield, the defense ministry said on Monday.

The announcement is almost certain to irritate the former Communist states of Eastern Europe and add another layer to the tensions in Moscow's fraught relations with Washington.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday reiterated the bloc's willingness to strike a historic partnership deal with Ukraine, but said the ball clearly was in Kiev's court.

"We of course want that Ukraine signs the association agreement, there is still some hope for that," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on arriving for talks in Brussels with his 27 EU counterparts.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday said that Western countries appear to have lost "their sense of reality" over the pro-EU protests in Ukraine, which he called the work of provocateurs.

He said the "frenzied" reaction to Ukraine's scrapping of the Association Agreement with the European Union last month was a disproportionate response to a "perfectly normal" decision.

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday proposed forcing offshore companies owned by Russians to pay taxes into the national budget as the Kremlin faces up to the potential consequences of the country's economic slump.

In his annual state of the nation address, Putin departed from the usual rhetoric of blaming outside cyclical factors for Russia's slowdown which the government predicts will result in growth of just 1.4 percent this year.