Moscow - Russian began withdrawing a military mission sent to repair railways in Georgia's rebel region of Abkhazia on Wednesday, a spokesman for the troops said.

Georgia lodged international protests against Russia's support for the breakaway region, saying such steps were aimed at the annexation of part of its territory.

Moscow, however, underlined the 450 railway troops were unarmed and dubbed their work a humanitarian mission that complied with its peacekeeping role in the region since a UN ceasefire ended a bloody civil war in 1994.

A third of the Russian troops pulled out of Abkhazia this week while the remaining soldiers will leave following an official ceremony Wednesday.

New Delhi, July 30 : Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has condemned the serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

Moscow- Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday saw off the nation's Olympic team with a rallying call and a prayer service at the Kremlin to the upcoming Beijing Games.

"We will not make prognoses, but all Olympians should know that we will cheer for you with all our hearts," Medvedev told the blue- and red-jacketed athletes in the Kremlin's gilded Georgevsky hall.

Moscow, July 29 : Archaeologists in the Sverdlovsk Region in Russia''s Urals have discovered the 9000-year-old bones of a rhinoceros, a local museum worker has said.

The finding is likely to belie the assumption that rhinoceros last wandered the Urals some 15,000-20,000 years ago. It seems to prove that they existed in the area a lot more recently.

Moscow - Two Russian submersibles plumbed the depths of Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia on Tuesday, diving a record 1,680 metres (5,512 feet) in one of the world's largest lakes.

"It is a world record for deep-water submersion in fresh water," an organizer told news agencies Itar-Tass on the barge fielding expedition that was to last another five hours.

The exploration mission is headed by pro-Kremlin lawmaker Artur Chilingarov, who led a mission with the same two mini-submarines to plant a Russian flag on the sea bed below the North Pole last August.

The Soviet-designed Mir-1 and Mir-2 submersibles are to scour Baikal's waters through mid-September for research on global warming and the local ecology and archeology.

Moscow - Sergei Kislyak, Russia's deputy foreign minister, was named the country's new ambassador to Washington, news agencies reported Tuesday.

Kislyak, 57, has headed difficult negotiations with the United States in recent months over Washington's plan to install parts of a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe.

The countries' conflicting security vision is one of a number of issues that makes for tense relations that show no signs of easing as Kislyak takes the post, despite a change of administrations in both capitals.

The two front-runners in the US presidential race have been strongly critical of former president Vladimir Putin, whose legacy his successor Dmitry Medvedev has pledged to follow.