The world's largest and second largest economies have established 'Space Hotline,' a new communications channel to serve as a diplomatic safety valve.
Russia has handed a multi-billion dollar contract to build a bridge to the Crimea peninsula to an ally and former judo partner of Vladimir Putin who is under Western sanctions.
Russia and Ukraine made progress on Friday towards resolving a dispute over gas supplies in time for winter, but European leaders said Moscow still had to do much more to prop up a fragile ceasefire and end fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin's prized oil firm Rosneft is cutting staff and production and selling stakes in Siberian fields in the strongest evidence to date that Western sanctions are hurting what was the world's fastest growing oil firm in recent years.
Herman Gref, the Chief Executive of state-run Russian bank OAO Sberbank, has called on the Kremlin to prevent restrictions to the Bitcoin as lawmakers consider curbs, Bloomberg reported.