Paris - As the European Union prepared to hold an emergency summit on the Caucasus crisis Monday Georgia's ambassador to France called for Russia to be given a "last chance" before any possible sanctions.

"We are realistic," Mamuka Kudava told the daily Le Parisien. "One has to give the Russians a last chance, so that they are obligated to take heed of the six-point agreement decided with (EU council president Nicolas) Sarkozy on August 12."

The agreement calls for a ceasefire, Russian troop withdrawal and international talks over the security of Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

London, Sep. 1: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned Europe that his country’s energy reserves will flow to the Far East if European leaders seek to punish Moscow for invading Georgia.

Putin, who was speaking from Siberia, where he is inspecting work on a new pipeline that aims to speed up oil supply to Asia, said that Moscow would not succumb to threats from Europe.

Moscow, Sep. 1 : Russia on Sunday laid out guiding principles of its foreign policy that included a claim to a “privileged” sphere of influence in the world.

In an address to Russian Television viewers, President Dmitri Medvedev said from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, that his government would adhere to five principles.

The New York Times quoted him as saying that Russia would observe international law and rejected the United States dominance of world affairs in a “unipolar” world.

London, September 1 : Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been hailed as a hero after preventing a TV crew from being killed by a tiger at the Ussuri reserve in Siberia.

The former President visited the reserve to observe researchers monitored the tigers in the wild.

When he saw a trapped beast escape and charge towards a nearby camera crew, Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquillizer gun.

Moscow - Just hours before a European Union emergency summit on the crisis in Georgia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the situation on the telephone, the agency Interfax reported late Sunday.

The two leaders focussed on the disputed buffer zones held by the Russian Army on Georgian territory along the two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, according to the report from Interfax, which cited presidium officials in Moscow.

Vienna - Europe's declared goal to shift away from Russian oil and gas was always a challenge. It's even more difficult after Moscow's assault on Georgia, analysts say.

Georgia's strategic role as a pipeline transit country, run by a US-backed leadership that Moscow detests, formed the backdrop to the conflict that erupted in early August.

After Russian troops handed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili a humiliating battlefield defeat, the region's fragility and Moscow's clout are more obvious than ever. Monday's emergency EU summit on Georgia will not change that in the short term.