Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced Sunday he had been elected president of the unregistered Popular Alliance party.

"I have been elected president of Popular Alliance. Thank you for your confidence," said the 37-year-old on Twitter.

A Boeing 737 belonging to a domestic Russian airline crashed Sunday while attempting to land at an airport in western Tatarstan, killing all 50 people on board, Russia's emergency situations ministry said.

"According to preliminary information, all the people on board the flight, 44 passengers and six crew members, were killed," a ministry spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

Russia on Saturday finally handed over a refurbished ex-Soviet aircraft carrier to India after a refit that overran by five years and went vastly over budget, damaging ties between the countries.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony took part in a ceremony at the Arctic port of Severodvinsk on Saturday morning, Russian news agencies reported.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday that Iran nuclear talks had eliminated the fundamental areas of disagreement and there was a real chance of reaching a deal next week.

"Our general impression is that there is a very good chance that must not be missed," the foreign ministry cited Lavrov as saying in a transcript of the interview broadcast on TVTs television.

Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard briefly caged herself near Paris's Louvre museum to demand the freeing of 30 Greenpeace activists jailed in Russia over an Arctic protest.

Cotillard, the star of the acclaimed 2007 film "La Vie en Rose" on French singer Edith Piaf, entered the cage and held a banner proclaiming: "I am a climate defender."

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev came under new pressure Friday after a public rebuke from President Vladimir Putin over one of his signature reforms passed during his stint as Kremlin chief.

Putin said late Thursday upon returning from a trip to Asia that he had heard some public criticism of proposed new legislation that would return investigators' right to launch tax fraud cases.

Russia is offering to sell Egypt modern helicopters and air defense systems in a landmark deal reportedly worth $2 billion that would mark a revival of large-scale military cooperation, a Russian official said Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Egypt on Thursday seeking lucrative contracts with the government after the ousting of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The Syrian government will send a delegation to Moscow on Monday for talks with Russian officials on preparations for a proposed peace conference in Geneva, an official said.

The source said on Thursday the delegation would be made up of President Bashar Assad's presidential adviser Buthaina Shaaban, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad and Ahmad Arnous, the ministry's senior official on European affairs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday held his first telephone talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad in two years, applauding Damascus for its willingness to attend a peace conference and destroy its chemical weapons, the Kremlin said.

Putin "positively assessed" the readiness of Assad's government to send a delegation to planned peace talks in Geneva and "expressed satisfaction" with Damascus's cooperation in the destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Israeli Home Front Minister Gilad Erdan on Thursday slammed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intensive campaigning against an emerging nuclear deal with Iran.

"I was astounded to hear John Kerry's remarks about why the prime minister is criticizing the agreement being formulated in Geneva without waiting for it to be signed," Erdan told an Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv.