Dozens of heavy Russian military vehicles massed on Friday near the border with Ukraine, while Ukrainian border guards crossed the frontier to inspect a huge Russian aid convoy

• August 15, 2014

Artillery shells hit close to the centre of Ukraine's separatist-held city of Donetsk for the first time on Thursday, killing at least one person, as a large Russian aid convoy rumbled towards the border.

• August 14, 2014

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia would stand up for itself but not at the cost of confrontation with the outside world, a conciliatory note after months of tough rhetoric over the crisis in Ukraine.

• August 14, 2014

Russia's Rosneft (ROSN.MM), which produces more oil than Iraq or Iran, is seeking a $42 billion loan from a fund earmarked for Russian pensions to help it weather Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's role in Ukraine.

• August 14, 2014

A Snapshot of Key Developments in the External Relations of the Russian Gas Sector
By Jack Sharples, EGF Associate Researcher on the external dimensions of Russian gas

Key points:

• Gazprom and the EU – EU antitrust investigators continue to prepare ‘statement of objections’; Gazprom excluded from expanded EU sanctions list
• Nord Stream – Planned capacity auction for OPAL cancelled, as European Commission postpones ruling indefinitely
• South Stream - Gazprom subsidiary Centrgaz is awarded the construction contract for South Stream in Serbia; Bulgarian government willing to listen to the European Commission over South Stream; European Commission recommends that Serbia halt work on South Stream pending legal clarifications
• Gazprom and Ukraine - Naftogaz and Ukrainian government announce plan to avoid Russian gas imports until March 2015; Ukrainian government and Naftogaz disagree over reports of reduced gas deliveries from Europe to Ukraine; Gazprom and Naftogaz arbitration cases could be combined
• Asia-Pacific region - Gazprom continues design process for proposed Vladivostok LNG terminal
• Elena Burmistrova replaces Alexander Medvedev as Director-General of Gazprom Export

• August 12, 2014

Switzerland on Tuesday added 26 Russians and Ukrainians and 18 organizations to a list designed to prevent it being used as a conduit to circumvent Western sanctions against Russia.

• August 5, 2014

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev threatened on Tuesday to retaliate for the grounding of a subsidiary of national airline Aeroflot because of EU sanctions, with one newspaper reporting that European flights to Asia over Siberia could be banned.

• August 5, 2014

Representatives from China and Taiwan have reached an agreement to restart formal negotiations on a free-trade pact that would eliminate tax on the vast majority of goods flowing between the two, Taiwan officials said Tuesday.

• August 5, 2014