President Bashar Assad's key ally Moscow has not stopped supporting the Syrian regime, a state daily said on Sunday, hours after Russia's top diplomat met the Syrian opposition leader.

"Bets that Russia would change its mind and modify its stance clash with its policy, which is commanded by its interests and strategic considerations," the official daily Ath Thawra wrote in an editorial.

The city of Volgograd was renamed Stalingrad for a day Saturday as Russia marked the 70-year anniversary of a brutal battle in which the Red Army defeated Nazi forces and changed the course of World War II.

Commuter buses emblazoned with pictures of the feared Soviet dictator ran across the southern city as patriotic Russians remembered what many view as the Soviet people's greatest achievement.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will discuss the carnage in Syria in meetings on Saturday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Syrian opposition chief Moaz al-Khatib, the White House said.

Biden will hold the meetings, and also see U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi at the Munich Security Conference on a trip that will also include talks with leaders of Germany, France and Britain.

Russia said Thursday it was checking reports of an Israeli air strike against Syria but would condemn the "unprovoked" attack if the information proved true.

The foreign ministry said it was "deeply concerned" by Syrian claims its military research center had come under Israeli fighter jet attack and other reports of bombs being dropped on a convoy near the Lebanese border.

Russian agents detained a Colombian priest on arrival at a Moscow airport and found he had swallowed over a dozen condoms stuffed with cocaine, the federal anti-narcotics service said Wednesday.

Anti-narcotics officers detained the man at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport because his "sickly appearance and nervous behavior" raised suspicions, the service said.

Russia on Monday replaced the leader of Dagestan, a volatile region in the Northern Caucasus where federal forces are struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency fueled by corruption and poverty.

President Vladimir Putin relieved Dagestani leader Magomedsalam Magomedov of his post and appointed ruling party lawmaker Ramazan Abdulatipov acting head of the region on the shores of the Caspian Sea, the Kremlin said in a statement.

President Bashar Assad's chances of political survival are shrinking by the day, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev charged on Sunday, accusing the embattled Syrian leader of making a possibly fatal error in delaying reforms.

"He should have acted much more quickly and reached out to the peaceful opposition which was ready to sit at the negotiating table with him," Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying.

Russia, one of the Syrian regime's last supporters, continues to supply weapons to Damascus under contracts signed long ago, Syria's deputy prime minister said on Saturday.

"Syria has always received and today is still receiving (weapons from Russia). We have agreements signed before the conflict and Russia is fulfilling its obligations," Qadri Jamil told Moscow Echo radio.

Russia's parliament has given initial backing to a bill banning homosexual "propaganda" among children that could lead to gays being fined for demonstrating or kissing in public, a move condemned by the United States and rights groups.

The 388-1 vote in the first of three readings Friday came hours after police detained more than 20 mostly young opponents who were staging a "kiss-in" protest outside the building of the State Duma lower house.

Ukraine and the global oil giant Royal Dutch Shell signed Thursday a $10 billion shale gas production sharing agreement aimed at helping the ex-Soviet nation ease its dependence on Russia.

The deal was signed in the presence of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych by Shell CEO Peter Voser and Ukrainian Energy Minister Eduard Stavitsky on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, a gathering of the world's business and political elite.