A new word is launched in Russia: a Marsonaut. The six members of the simulation programme for a visit to Mars have started the third phase of the experiment, namely a Mars landing followed by the first Mars walk. The Russian flag now flies firmly and proudly on the Red Planet! Work is under way in Russia in the first active tests in the simulation phase of the manned space flight to Mars. The multinational... 

Japan’s foreign minister said Thursday that Tokyo’s claim over the disputed Kuril islands remains “absolutely unwavering” despite Russia’s decision to boost its military presence on the territory. Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, who is due to visit Moscow from Friday, said Russia’s occupation of the islands is illegal and shrugged off President Dmitry Medvedev’s... 

Emotions are running high in the dispute over the Kuril Islands. Russia and Japan have been divided over ownership of the islands since the 1950s, but this had long since ceased to be a hot-button issue. How can we explain the unexpected surge in interest in this largely dormant territorial dispute? The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 renewed hope that the dispute with Japan would be settled.... 

Russian Islamist leader Doku Umarov has claimed responsibility for the bomb attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo airport last month which killed 36 people. Mr Umarov heads the Caucasus Emirate, a shadowy terrorist group that dreams of creating an Islamic state in Russia’s north Caucasus region and operates mainly in the wild backcountry of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia. Speaking in a video... 

The crewmembers will soon step out on a simulated Martian surface. The crew of the Mars500 simulated mission to the Red Planet have reached a key milestone. The six men, sealed since June inside steel containers representing a spacecraft, have “gone into orbit” at their destination. Three of the group will now “descend” to the planet, don real spacesuits and walk on the “surface”... 

A clergyman lights candles at the site of the bomb blast at Domodedovo airport, near Moscow, Russia. Attacker who killed 35 is 20-year-old man from troubled Caucasus region. Russian investigators have said they now know the identity of the suicide bomber who claimed the lives of 35 people in an attack on Moscow’s busiest airport last Monday. The attacker is a 20-year-old man from the unsettled... 

Four people have been killed and three more wounded and hospitalised in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt as a result of a car bomb explosion. An official of the Dagestani Interior Ministry told Itar-Tass on Thursday that the “incident took place on Wednesday at 22:10 MSK on the 739th kilometre of the Kavkaz federal highway at the exit from Khasavyurt.” According to the source, an unknown man parked... 

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said that it has been “at least bewildered” by the release of a book by a former Chechen militant Ilyas Akhmadov in the US. The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that Ilyas Akhmadov “passing himself off as the Foreign Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is in fact a former militant who served as an aide for the international terrorist [Shamil] Basayev.”... 

Lenin's waxy corpse remains a popular tourist attraction and is regularly treated with a special cocktail of chemicals to stop it from degrading. Two-thirds of Russians want Vladimir Lenin to be removed from his Red Square mausoleum in central Moscow, a new poll has shown. The poll, organised by Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party, comes after a senior figure in the party sparked... 

Moscow’s Domodedovo airport – the busiest in the Russian capital – has been rocked by an explosion that has reportedly killed 31 people. Suspicion has fallen on the “Caucasus Emirate”, an Islamist separatist movement in Chechnya. More than 100 more are thought to have been injured in the blast, which reports suggest may have been the work of a suicide bomber. Russia’s chief... 

A woolly mammoth skeleton is seen on display at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas in September 2009. Instead of Jurassic Park, try Pleistocene Park. A team of scientists from Japan, Russia and the United States hopes to clone a mammoth, a symbol of Earth’s ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, according to a report in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun. The researchers say they hope to produce... 

Runway changes are needed to account for the moving magnetic pole, which is nearing Russia at 40 miles per year. Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached — of all places – Tampa International Airport. The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account... 

"But people's unity should not be limited only by times of trouble. It should become an indispensable part of our national identity and life" Russian Orthodox believers flocked to churches on Friday to attend Christmas service. At least 14,000 people attended Christmas service in Moscow alone, a police spokesman said. “So far, about 14,000 people attended the capital’s churches,... 

A chilling report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared for President Medvedev by Colonel General Alexander Zelin, Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s Air Forces, says that the deadly crash this past week of a Kogalymavia Airline flight enroute from the western Siberian town of Surgut to Moscow was due to a ‘critical failure’ of the Tupolev-154’s electronic avionics systems that was unable... 

Trees and power lines were brought down last week by freezing rain. Wintry weather in Russia has caused more power blackouts in the Moscow region, threatening further disruption to its busiest airport, Domodedovo. The airport suffered serious disruption last week, with hundreds of flights cancelled and 8,000 people stranded. Although power was restored on Saturday, heavy snow and gales have brought...