Syria's opposition leaders said they expected more support from Russia on Friday after President Dmitry Medvedev accused some of those protesting against Bashar Assad of being "terrorists".

The Russian upper house of parliament's foreign affairs chief Mikhail Margelov met a visiting Syrian delegation that included National Organization for Human Rights in Syria head Ammar Qurabi.

Russia on Thursday mourned the deaths of 43 people including top ice hockey players in a plane crash as President Dmitry Medvedev planned to visit the site of the disaster.

An aging Yak-42 plane carrying three-times Russian champion ice hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl including several former and current NHL stars crashed on Wednesday near Yaroslavl, 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow.

For years, Moscow's historic Gorky Park, the spooky location of U.S. writer Martin Cruz Smith's thriller, was a tacky, neglected space with ancient rollercoasters, vodka and candy floss.

Now visitors lounge on beanbags, attend mass yoga classes and access free wifi on their laptops.

The BRICS group of emerging powers are determined not to allow a Libyan-style solution to the crisis in Syria, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

"If it's up to the BRICS, the Libyan scenario won't be repeated," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying in a joint press conference with his Brazilian counterpart Antonio Patriota.

Officials from Russian energy giant Gazprom will visit South Korea to discuss the gas pipeline project recently agreed by Russian and North Korean leaders, a report said Sunday.

Yonhap news agency cited Seoul officials as saying that representatives from the world's top gas firm will meet with their counterparts at the state-run Korea Gas Corp. this month to discuss technical details of the project.

Russia on Saturday successfully tested its Topol strategic missile with a new warhead designed to breach missile shields, Russian news agencies reported, citing the defense ministry.

"The experimental warhead of the missile hit the designated target with high precision at the testing site on Kamchatka peninsula," a spokesman for the strategic rocket forces told the Interfax news agency.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday said Russia had invited members of Libya's transitional government to Moscow for energy talks, the Interfax news agency reported.

"They suggested holding meetings. We invited representatives to Moscow on their request. We will discuss all this with them," Lavrov was quoted as telling journalists at a regional summit in Dushanbe.

Russia disapproves of the European Union oil embargo imposed on Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported.

"We have always said that unilateral sanctions will do no good. This destroys a partnership approach to any crisis," Lavrov was quoted as telling journalists at a regional summit in Dushanbe.

Ukraine said on Friday it will have to negotiate a new gas deal with Russia because of previously-undisclosed plans to break up the republic's existing energy company.

The unexpected announcement came in the heat of the two neighbors' second spat over gas prices in three years and appeared part of a Ukrainian effort to force Russia to ease its negotiating stance over prices.

A mother is lecturing her 23-year-old daughter about her love life, flailing a kitchen knife above her head for emphasis.

Mom's point: She'd like her immigrant daughter, from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, to marry a man with similar roots, keeping the family's East European Jewish tradition.