The Obama administration responded cautiously to the very public detention, then release by Russian authorities, of an American diplomat accused of spying in Moscow, saying that the U.S. remains committed to close relations with Russia and downplaying the possibility of retaliation against Russian intelligence agents in the U.S.
Dozens of Americans have been placed on a "Guantanamo list" barring them from entering Russia, in the latest phase of Moscow's retaliation against a U.S. law that imposes sanctions against Russians suspected of human rights abuses.
China is likely to express concerns about the U.S. deployment in Japan of a radar system that can track Chinese anti-ship missiles that are the linchpin of plans to keep the U.S. Navy away from its territorial waters.
Russia's foreign minister said Friday that Moscow isn't discussing Syria's future without President Bashar Assad as Washington has claimed, in the latest volley in a contentious back-and-forth on how to end the bloody conflict.
Syrian government troops heavily shelled rebellious districts in the resistance stronghold of Homs Tuesday, killing at least 16 people and compounding fears of a new round of bloody urban combat in a country careening toward all-out civil war.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has attacked America's human rights record in its first report on injustice elsewhere in the world, offering examples such as the Guantanamo Bay prison and wrongful death-row convictions to paint the U.S. as hypocritical for lecturing other nations on the subject of rights.
Moscow is preparing a list of U.S. officials it will ban from Russia in retaliation for a White House policy to keep Russian human rights abusers out of the U.S.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a classified report late last year that Russia's military intelligence was responsible for a bomb blast that occurred at an exterior wall of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September.
Russia's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday fired back at U.S. and European criticism of the second conviction of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, telling Western leaders to mind their own business.
