Yekaterinburg

Russia's security service arrested an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal on espionage charges, the first time a U.S. correspondent has been detained on spying accusations since the Cold War. The newspaper denied the allegations and demanded his release.

Three teams from Bulgaria violate the "football embargo" that European football has imposed on Russian clubs and will hold friendly matches with teams from Russia, it is clear from the Russian football calendar.

Bulgaria will stop accepting documents for tourist visas for citizens of Russia, RIA Novosti reported, citing the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR). The measure applies to both tourists and property owners in Bulgaria.

A Russian gallery has said one of its security guards was implicated in vandalizing a 20th century avant-garde artwork, after he drew eyes onto figures of an abstract painting with a pen.

In December, a painting by Anna Leporskaya, a student of legendary artist Kazimir Malevich, was found defaced while on display at the Yeltsin Centre in Yekaterinburg.

A former police officer opened gunfire from the balcony of his apartment in Yekaterinburg, wounding a National Guard officer and a child, a source in the local law enforcement agencies told TASS on Sunday.

Russia has decided to resume flights to and from Greece starting from February 8 as the spread of the coronavirus infection has slowed, the government said on Thursday.

It said the planes will fly twice a week from Moscow to Athens. It also said there will be three flights per week to Singapore from the Russian capital.

"It was important for Yeltsin that Putin was of different generation because the country should not have been left to those who ruled it during the Soviet Union", former Kremlin Head of Administration Valentin Yumashev said during a public interview at the Yeltsin Presidential Center in Yekaterinburg.

RFE/RL - Thousands of anti-Kremlin demonstrators have taken to the streets in Russia to protest the government's plan to raise the retirement age in rallies coinciding with regional and local elections nationwide, triggering tense confrontations with police and resulting in hundreds of detentions, according to a rights-monitoring group.

The Russian Federation has this summer thus hosted three million foreign visitors for the World Cup 2018 - the planet's top football competition, organized by FIFA once every four years.

The highly coveted title has this year been won by France.

SputnikNews - Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and flight engineer Oleg Artemyev played soccer on board the ISS with a Telstar-18 ball, which will return to Earth on June 3 and open the World Cup 2018 in Russia.