Three Russian amphibious assault ships carrying hundreds of armed navy personnel will briefly dock in a Moscow-leased Syrian port in the coming days, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

The warships are currently conducting planned exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and will make a port call in Tartus to pick up fresh food and water supplies, the news agencies quoted an unnamed defense source as saying.

President Vladimir Putin will strongly defend Russia's position on the Syria conflict when he meets British Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Thursday, his spokesman said.

"We expect to have another opportunity to continue our dialogue and explain to the British side our well-argued, consistent and absolutely clear position on the (Syria) problem," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

French President Francois Hollande on Saturday urged the U.N. Security Council to rapidly intervene in the Syria conflict to pre-empt an all-out civil war.

"The role of the countries of the Security Council is to intervene as quickly as possible," he said, specifically addressing Damascus allies Russia and China and warning that failure to do so would mean "chaos and civil war."

Russia said Saturday it would not cooperate with a new round of European Union sanctions against Syria and would not consent to inspections of ships flying the Russian flag.

"We do not plan to take any part in measures carrying out European Union decisions directed against Syria," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was quoted as saying in a statement.

Russia warned Saturday that a "tragedy" was looming in Syria's second city of Aleppo but said it was unrealistic to expect the government would stand by when armed rebels were occupying major cities.

"We are persuading the government that they need to make some first gestures," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference alongside his Japanese counterpart.

U.N. negotiations to draft the first international treaty on the multi-billion-dollar arms trade have ended without a deal, with some diplomats blaming the United States for the deadlock.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Friday he was "disappointed" that member states failed to clinch an agreement after several years of preparatory work and four weeks of negotiations, calling it a "setback."

The Russian military warned Friday that any attempt by Syrian rebels to attack a Russian military base at the Syrian port of Tartus would be “rebuffed immediately.”

"If the armed Syrian opposition ventures to implement their threat and to attack the Russian naval supplies and maintenance facility, Russia has ample capabilities in the region now to provide an adequate response. We won't recommend hotheads in the Syrian opposition doing that," a source in the Russian General Staff told the Interfax news agency.

Six suspected rebels, including three women, have been killed in a security sweep in Russia's restive North Caucasus, the interior ministry said on Friday.

The ministry's spokesman in the Caspian Sea province of Dagestan, Vyacheslav Gasanov, said special forces cornered the suspects in a private house in the regional capital, Makhachkala. He said they refused to surrender and five of them were killed in a skirmish on Friday.

Russia is holding talks about opening naval bases in Moscow's Soviet-era allies Cuba and Vietnam as well as the Seychelles, the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy said Friday.

"It is true, we are working on the deployment of Russian naval bases outside Russian territory," Vice Admiral Viktor Chirkov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian authorities said Thursday they had detained two more people in a probe into clashes between the opposition and police on the eve of Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a third term in May.

Russia's Investigative Committee said two more activists, identified as Nikolai Kavkazsky and Alexei Polikhovich, had been detained as part of the probe into the May 6 violence.