Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his personal savings were safe in the bank and held himself up as the example to follow in an interview published Wednesday to sooth growing distrust among his countrymen.

"I have kept all of my bank accounts. I did not withdraw any money and I did not transfer my rubles to dollars," Medvedev answered a reader's question in the Russian daily Argumenty i Fakty.

"I am sure that my savings, just like the savings of all other Russians, are not under threat," he added.

In January election campaign disclosures, Medvedev, the former chairman of Russia's largest firm, energy giant Gazprom, had 2.74 million rubles (100,000 dollars) deposited in eight bank accounts.

Moscow - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Moscow on Monday to seek a long-delayed deal on energy ties with Russia and discuss the global financial crisis.

Wen will hold talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev in his two-day visit to the capital before heading to oil-rich Kazakhstan for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security grouping of Central Asian states.

Moscow - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, facing domestic criticism over a failed war with Russia, on Monday dismissed his prime minister and named the country's ambassador to Turkey as his replacement.

He was expected to announce a new cabinet this week in what he said were needed "radical democratic reform" Monday.

Meanwhile, the country's influential former head of parliament Nino Burjanadze formed a new opposition party set to vehicle growing criticism of Saakashvili's management of the war.

Moscow  - Russia - which has a military cooperation agreement with Syria - Monday joined those co

Moscow - Russian energy monopoly Gazprom and aluminium mining giant RusAl clinched deals on Monday for development projects in Vietnam during the visit of the country's president to Moscow.

Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet and his Russian counterpart President Dmitry Medvedev were at the signing of the joint projects at the Kremlin after talks on boosting trade and energy ties.

Gazprom and it overseas operations arm ZarubezhNefteGaz sealed a deal with Vietnam's state oil firm PetroVietnam for joint exploration of the Asian state's offshore oil reserves.

Moscow - Texan space tourist Richard Gariott said Monday the Russian space agency and NASA should give business entrepreneurs wider access to the International Space Station (ISS).

Silicon Valley millionaire Garriott, who made his fortune designing fantasy computer games, said he fit the profile as he spoke with journalists three days after landing back to earth from his tour of the space station.

"I think NASA and Roscosmos and other partners in the ISS should take broad steps to encourage businessmen, such as myself, to take advantage of the profits to be had in the space sphere - it would be a huge loss not to," Garriott was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying from the cosmonauts training base in Star City outside Moscow.