Moscow, Sept. 20: Russian President Medvedev’s noble gesture to honour Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s struggle against totalitarian rule in the former Soviet Union, by naming a street in Moscow after him, has reopened a debate about Russia’s remaining symbols of the communist era.

According to The Times, the decision sparked protests from the small Communist faction on the city council, which complained that it was disrespectful to the revolutionaries who had fought to establish the Soviet regime that Solzhenitsyn helped to destroy.

Moscow - War booty nabbed in the rout of Georgian forces has gone on display at Moscow's military museum, courtesy of the Russian army. And the message is clear.

"We fought the US, that's what this exhibit says. They are responsible for this conflict," Giorgy Gavrikov, 72, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, said as he left the small exhibition room that looks to become a permanent part of the Central Army Museum.

Moscow  - President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday repudiated what he said were the West's efforts to drop a new "Iron Curtain" before Russia and blamed NATO for sparking war last month in Georgia.

"We are in effect being pushed down a path that is not based on a full-fledged, civilized partnership with other countries, but on autonomous development, behind deaf walls, behind an Iron Curtain," Medvedev said in a speech to civil society groups in Moscow.

Moscow- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told investors at a forum in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday that Russia would not play politics with its market and remained open to foreigners despite acrimony over its war with Georgia.

"Our ideology and politics remain the same," Putin told executives. "Confrontation is not our choice. There will be no politically motivated closing of our market or curbs on economic relations."

Moscow - Russia's stock two leading stock exchanges jumped Friday minutes after reopening following a two-day suspension of trading to stop the nation's worst financial crisis sice the 1998 default.

The dollar-denominated RTS climbed 11 per cent in the start of trading while the ruble-denominated ruble-denominated MICEX soared 14.4 per cent causing market authorities to again suspend trading for an hour from 11:05 Moscow time (0705 GMT).

Vienna  - The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) cannot send monitors to the Georgian region of South Ossetia for now, after talks broke down owing to Russia's insistence that the officers should not be stationed in the separatist province.

"There is no point in continuing negotiations in Vienna, at this stage," said Finland, the current OSCE chairman, in a statement.

While most of the organization's 56 members want to deploy unarmed military monitors in all of Georgia, including South Ossetia, diplomats said Russia wants to keep monitors out of that region.