Russia's lower house of parliament gave key support Wednesday to a bill banning Americans from adopting children, resulting in a huge outcry from rights groups.

The bill, which came in retaliation for a U.S. measure that punishes Russia for its rights record under President Vladimir Putin, was approved by 400 lawmakers in the 450-seat chamber.

Russia's security council chief Nikolai Patrushev said Tuesday he did not see any grounds for a popular uprising in the country but warned the Kremlin would not allow opposition protests to wreak havoc.

"In today's Russia there are no preconditions for possible 'color' revolutions and we are certain that we will not allow the realization of such scenarios in our country," Patrushev told tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Russia is sending a new flotilla of warships to the Mediterranean, the defense ministry said on Tuesday, amid the escalating situation in Syria.

The frigate Yaroslavl Mudry, the landing ships Kaliningrad and Alexander Shabalin as well as two other vessels have left their home port of Baltiysk on the Baltic and are heading for the Mediterranean, the defense ministry said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.

Russia said Tuesday that two of its nationals along with an Italian steel worker had been abducted in Syria on a motorway from the port city of Tartus.

"By all appearances, they are Russians," Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on a visit to the Central Asia state of Uzbekistan.

Georgia said Monday that it wants to end "confrontation" with Russia after the ex-Soviet foes held their first direct talks since they fought a brief war in 2008.

"It is not possible to remain in perpetual confrontation with Russia," Tbilisi's special representative for Russia, Zurab Abashidze, told a news conference after returning from talks in Switzerland on Friday with Moscow's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin.

Turkey has made a new proposal to Russia for an orderly peaceful transition in war-ravaged Syria in the post-regime era, a Turkish newspaper reported on Monday.

The proposal calls for President Bashar Assad to step down in the first three months of 2013 and for the transition process to be undertaken by the opposition National Coalition, which was recognised as the sole representative of Syrians by Arab and Western states last week, the Radikal newspaper reported.

Russian police said Sunday they had released some 40 people detained during a banned protest against Vladimir Putin, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Braving freezing cold and the threat of heavy fines, hundreds of people defied the authorities Saturday to gather at Moscow's Lubyanka Square, the seat of the FSB security services, to mark one year since the start of unprecedented anti-Putin protests triggered by fraud-tainted parliamentary polls last December.

Russian police on Saturday detained dozens of people, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as they broke up an anti-Vladimir Putin rally that mustered hundreds in Moscow in defiance of an official ban.

Scores of Muscovites, many holding white roses, defied the authorities by gathering at Lubyanka Square, the seat of the FSB security services, despite temperatures of minus 14 degrees Celsius (seven degrees Fahrenheit).

Russia on Friday condemned U.S. sanctions against officials implicated in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky as "dangerous" meddling and hit back with moves for a bill of its own blacklisting American citizens.

The bill, which grants normal trade relations with Russia but also includes a blacklist of alleged human rights abusers, had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin and was signed into law Friday by President Barack Obama.

Russian investigators said Friday that they had launched a fraud probe against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his brother, putting new legal pressure on the protest movement's most charismatic figure.

The new probe -- the second major investigation launched against Navalny -- also comes as the opposition plans an unsanctioned rally Saturday in Moscow after the City Hall denied to authorize their proposed routes.