Ukraine's leader has become a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is unable to take independent decisions on the country's future, jailed opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko said in an interview Saturday, calling on her bitter foe to step down.

Anti-government protests have rocked Ukraine for more than two months after President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a key EU trade pact that would have seen the country move closer to the European Union in favor of tighter ties with Soviet-era master Russia.

Russia will release the next installment of its $15-billion loan to Ukraine at the end of the month, a newspaper close to President Viktor Yanukovych said Monday, following talks between Ukraine's leader and his Russian counterpart.

The bailout was promised to Ukraine in December after Yanukovych rejected an EU trade and political pact in favor of closer ties with Russia, a move that triggered widespread protests and led to the resignation of the prime minister.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin the latest developments in the region and the bilateral ties between the two countries.

Miqati, who is currently in Russia, also held talks with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of his visit to the country to attend the opening of the winter Olympic opening ceremony in Sochi.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe struck a conciliatory tone Friday at an unusually low-key annual rally demanding the return of islands occupied by Russia, hours before he left for the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Abe will attend the opening ceremony of the Games in southern Russia later Friday where he will also meet President Vladimir Putin, the latest step in an increasingly close working relationship.

An adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Washington on Thursday of financing and arming Ukrainian militants as a senior U.S. official arrived for crisis talks in Kiev.

Putin's economic adviser Sergei Glazyev, often seen as the Kremlin's pointman on Ukraine, also suggested that Russia had legal grounds to intervene in the two-month-old crisis, describing the situation at attempted coup.

A Russian court on Monday handed down long jail sentences to three men who stabbed and kicked a man they believed to be gay and then set him on fire.

The men, all from the same village in the region of Kamchatka in far eastern Russia, committed the murder last May because they were "convinced of the non-traditional sexual orientation of their fellow villager," regional prosecutors said in a statement, using a euphemism for being gay.

Thousands of demonstrators marched through Moscow on Sunday to demand Russia free eight prisoners jailed after a 2012 protest against President Vladimir Putin.

There was heavy security for the march, with hundreds of police lining the route from Pushkin Square to Turgenev Square, while a helicopter hovered overhead.

President Vladimir Putin's advisor said on Friday that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych would lose power as a result of the ex-Soviet state's political crisis unless he "quashes the rebellion".

"He (Yanukovych) is currently in the situation of a creeping coup and because he is the guarantor of the Constitution, security and integrity of Ukraine, then the president has no choice," Kremlin economic aide Sergei Glazyev said in remarks released on Friday.

Russian security services on Thursday published the names of the alleged suicide bombers who carried out two deadly blasts last month and said they had also arrested two suspected organizers.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC) released the names in a statement just a week before the Winter Olympic Games are set to open in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to push for a "constructive dialogue" to defuse the crisis in Ukraine, her office said.

Merkel held telephone talks with the Russian leader asking him to "push at his end for a constructive dialogue between the opposition and government" in Ukraine, it said in a statement.