President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia had become a freer nation during his four-year term, citing the mass protests of recent months as evidence of change.

"Spring has come to us, both literally and figuratively. I congratulate you," Medvedev said in a live television interview, his last before he hands over the presidency to Vladimir Putin.

Russia on Thursday joined the United States and the European Union in expressing concern over Israel's decision to legalize three settler outposts in West Bank.

"Moscow is treating this information with serious concern," the foreign ministry said in a statement, noting that the move in the occupied Palestinian territory "affects the chances" of new talks being held by the two sides.

Russia's outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev outlined his liberal credentials on Tuesday as he prepared to assume the premiership post under his mentor and successor Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev told a Kremlin meeting of Russia's political elite that he would fight for political and economic freedoms following his expected nomination to head president-elect Putin's cabinet in May.

Russia on Tuesday warned both sides in Syria against disrupting the work of U.N. observers in the conflict-torn nation and called their work crucial to providing an unbiased picture on the ground.

"The more observers there are, the more information we get that is based on objective facts and that is free from speculation," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said while on a visit to the Central Asian state of Tajikistan.

China and Russia on Sunday launched their first joint naval exercises amid tensions between China and its Asian neighbors over regional territorial claims.

The six days of drills are taking place in the Yellow Sea off China's east coast, the official China News Service said, adding they were the first dedicated exercises involving the two navies.

Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko shunned doctors on Saturday after being moved to hospital for back pain that stopped her attending a new trial for tax fraud.

Witnesses cited by local media said two ambulances and four police cars arrived at the women's penal colony in the eastern city of Kharkiv where she is serving a seven-year sentence and took her away late Friday.

Russia said Friday a ceasefire was generally holding in Syria despite some violations and should be seen as an achievement that was saving the country from a broader civil war.

"Despite the existing violations and provocations, the ceasefire is holding overall. This is a great achievement whose loss could lead to a dangerous retreat to a new wave of violence," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

China and the BRICS emerging economies are set to flex their muscles as the top finance officials of the G20 and the IMF meet Friday seeking to raise $400 billion to prevent financial contagion.

Having already rolled back the goal for new crisis intervention funds from $500 billion, the International Monetary Fund remained some $80 billion short going into Friday's meetings in Washington.

Western and Arab foreign ministers were to meet in Paris on Thursday for talks on the Syria crisis, with France warning Russia that its refusal to attend was plunging it deeper into isolation.

"I regret that Russia continues to lock itself into a vision that isolates it more and more, not just from the Arab world but also from the international community," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told journalists.

Katya Nikitina could not sleep, think, or move during her first seven days at the rehab clinic.

A heroin addict in the Urals in western Russia, she moved from Chelyabinsk to the facility in Yekaterinburg, the area's main urban center, to get clean.