Novosti report.

There is no hard proof that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, but Tehran has to clarify several key issues on its nuclear program to avoid fresh international action, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

Gideon Rachman on his Financial Times blog.

Exactly what happened in August, 2008, remains a subject of bitter dispute. So I have greatly enjoyed reading the painstaking reconstruction of events, by Ron Asmus, in a recently published book called, "A Little War that Shook the World" (Palgrave Macmillan). Asmus's sympathies clearly lie strongly with the Georgian side. But his research seems to be impeccable.

For me, the most fascinating revelation in the book comes on p.186, where Asmus appears to reveal that Vice-President Dick Cheney was pressing for the US to bomb Russia's invading troops in Georgia.

Xinhua report.

Russia opposes crippling sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear program, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday, citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

"The term 'crippling sanctions' on Iran is totally unacceptable to us. The sanctions should aim at strengthening the regime of non- proliferation," Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Interfax.

"We certainly cannot talk about sanctions that could be interpreted as punishment on the whole country and its people for some actions or inaction," Ryabkov said.

Juan Cole (Informed Comment) comments.

It appears that, the International Atomic Energy Agency is at least allowing for the possibility that documents allegedly found on a laptop some years ago --but discounted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency as of dubious provenance and incompatible with other intelligence gathered in Iran -- point to a nuclear weapons program that no one has been able to locate. Some close observers have concluded that the laptop documents are forgeries. A new IAEA report that declines to dismiss the alleged documents will certainly cause the war lobby in the United States to redouble its efforts to get up an attack on Iran.

[...]

But Russia's General of the Army Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, warned that an American attack on Iran now, when the US is bogged down in two wars, might well lead to the collapse of the United States. He said that such an attack would roil the region and have negative consequences for Russia (a neighbor of Iran via the Caspian Sea). And, he said, the Russian military is taking steps to forestall such an American strike on Iran.

Washington Post report.

Russia sees no reason to stall on the sale of its S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran, the Kremlin's powerful Security Council said Sunday, hours before the premier of Iran's adversary Israel was due to visit Moscow.

Speculation by Gregory White in Business Insider.

The Greek Prime Minister is set to visit Russia next week in the middle of the biggest crisis in the country's recent history. He will sit down to economic talks with his Russian counterpart Vladamir Putin and it has to be suspected that the debt crisis may be up for discussion.

They'll also be discussing military and energy policy. Could the Greek PM be trying to strike a bargain with Putin to save his troubled country?

If so, this seems like a monster blow to the EU, and posibly to NATO.

Reuters report.

Washington will hold preliminary talks with the Bulgarian government on hosting parts of a U.S. missile shield, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said on Friday.

The Leveretts comment.

It is hard to avoid concluding that the Obama Administration is deliberately overstating its alleged "progress" in persuading Moscow to support tougher sanctions against Iran.

Telegraph report.

A Russian-speaker with close ties to Moscow's ruling United Russia party, Mr Yanukovych is expected to prioritise a raft of policies that will mend Ukraine's fractious relations with its giant neighbour. He is also likely to give the Kremlin more say in the management of the country's strategically vital gas pipeline network that carries gas to Europe and heats millions of European homes.

His victory would mean that Ukraine, itself a giant country on the EU's eastern flank with almost 50 million people and a huge standing army, would drop its ambitions to join Nato and put its EU membership bid on the backburner.