President Vladimir Putin on Friday replaced Russia's army chief of staff with a veteran commander from the second Chechnya war, in a shake-up of the military after the sacking of the defense minister.

Army chief of staff Nikolai Makarov is to be replaced by General Valery Gerasimov, a commander at the North Caucasus military district in the second Chechnya war, Putin announced days after the sacking of defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov in a graft scandal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday congratulated Barack Obama with his victory in a tightly-fought U.S. presidential election vote that was greeted with relief in Moscow.

The Kremlin said Putin had reacted "positively" to Obama's victory over Mitt Romney after a campaign that saw the Republican Party challenger refer to Moscow as Washington's chief geopolitical foe.

The March 14 opposition alliance is hinging on a French-Saudi initiative that would steer Lebanon clear of the Syrian war and lead to a change in the Lebanese government, al-Mustaqbal movement sources said Wednesday.

Such an initiative would keep Lebanon away of the “Syrian swamp” and could expand to include the United States and Russia, the sources told As Safir daily.

Syrian rebels under increasing attack from regime warplanes have obtained 50 Stinger shoulder-launched missiles, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Amman Tuesday after talks with a top dissident.

Lavrov also stressed after his meeting in the Jordanian capital with Syria's defected former prime minister Riad Hijab that he planned to work with opposition groups to help end the conflict that has ravaged Syria for more than 19 months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday fired defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov over a corruption scandal, the most dramatic change to the government since he returned to the Kremlin for a third term.

Putin replaced Serdyukov, who had been implementing an unpopular but Kremlin-backed military reform, with Moscow region governor and long-standing ally Sergei Shoigu, his spokesman said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Cairo on Sunday with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi for talks about the Syrian conflict, agreeing on the need to move forward but finding little common ground.

"We discussed the situation in Syria... reviewing what has been done so far and if there is any way to move forward. And let us be clear, there wasn't any agreement on anything," al-Arabi told a joint news conference.

Several thousand Russian ultra-nationalists whose ranks included fierce Kremlin critics marched through central Moscow on Sunday calling for President Vladimir Putin's resignation and an end to illegal immigration.

Armed with anti-Putin slogans and black and yellow flags of pre-revolutionary Russia, the black-clad participants in the "Russian March" took to the streets as Putin is facing the most vocal opposition to his rule since he came to power 12 years ago.

Russia on Friday blasted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's call for an overhaul of the Syrian opposition and accused Washington of trying to solve the conflict on its own terms.

The Russian foreign ministry said Clinton's comments on the Syrian National Council (SNC) no longer representing the entire anti-regime movement clashed with the agreements world powers reached on the conflict in Geneva in June.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that he believed that two members of punk band Pussy Riot who began two-year terms in camps for hooliganism should be released.

"I would not put them in jail if I was a judge. I simply don't consider it right that they serve prison sentences. They have already been in jail long enough," he was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russia on Thursday put into force a new law on the Internet that allows the government to block websites with banned content, prompting fears that it will be used to suppress free speech.

The law, which was hastily voted in by the parliament despite opposition from major Internet companies, is officially intended to protect children from viewing unsuitable content.