Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday called for Europe to drop its "geopolitical games" and unite behind efforts to fight terrorism, a day after bomb attacks in Brussels killed around 30 people.

"I really hope that Europeans, in the face of the terrible threat of terrorism that occurred yesterday in Brussels, will put aside their geopolitical games and unite to prevent terrorists from acting on our continent," Lavrov was quoted by Russian agencies as telling visiting German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The airport in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don reopened on Monday, two days after a passenger jet crashed there, killing all 62 on board, as investigators continued their probe into the disaster.

The flydubai Boeing 737, which took off from Dubai, exploded into a fireball on Saturday after missing the runway in southern Russia while making a second attempt to land in heavy wind and rain.

Tearful residents in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Sunday laid flowers and lit candles at the airport where a flydubai passenger jet crashed a day earlier killing all 62 people on board.

A constant stream of mourners flocked to near the site where the Boeing 737 ploughed into the earth as it was trying to land in bad weather early Saturday, with the city of some 1 million struggling to come to terms with Russia's latest air tragedy.

Investigators in southern Russia were on Sunday probing the causes of a flydubai passenger jet crash that killed all 62 people on board, as emergency workers at the site wrapped up the salvage operation.

The Boeing 737, which flew from Dubai to the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, exploded into a fireball early Saturday after missing the runway in bad weather.

President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea on Friday as Russia marked two years since annexing the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in a move that dramatically damaged its ties with the West.

The Kremlin strongman stopped over on the island of Tuzla to oversee progress on a $3-billion (2.66-billion-euro) bridge project connecting Russia to Crimea, a key link that Moscow hopes will further bind it to the isolated region.

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine's separatist Donetsk province on Wednesday began issuing their own passports in a bid to reassert their independence from the Western-backed government in Kiev.

The red documents are similar in appearance to Russian passports and are issued by the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic -- a region whose independence has not even been recognized by Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday will bestow state awards on Russian military personnel who fought in Syria after ordering the withdrawal of armed forces from the war-torn country, the Kremlin said.

More than 700 soldiers and officers from the Russian air forces, ground forces and navy, and other military officials, have been invited to take part in the ceremony, the Kremlin said in a statement on Wednesday.

Russia's withdrawal of forces from Syria is a "positive step" that will help the ongoing Geneva peace talks, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said on Wednesday.

Russian warplanes began leaving Syria on Tuesday after Moscow's surprise decision to withdraw most of its forces from the war-torn country.

A ceremonial flypast, pilots tossed in the air in celebration and dozens of cheering supporters -- the first Russian warplanes on Tuesday returned home to a hero's welcome as part of the withdrawal of armed forces from Syria.

Several Su-34 strike fighters landed at an airbase outside the city of Voronezh located some 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Moscow after performing a fly-past for top commanders, relatives and supporters.

Russian media on Tuesday hailed as a political victory President Vladimir Putin's surprise decision to start withdrawing armed forces from Syria as U.N.-backed peace talks resumed in Geneva.

"Russia is setting an example of a peaceful approach to settling conflict," the pro-Kremlin Izvestia daily said on its front page.