Russia said Saturday it strongly condemns a drone strike on an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia claimed by Yemen's Huthi rebels, and urged parties to the conflict to halt violence.

Moscow and Tehran called for the rescue of the Iran nuclear deal Tuesday, as their top diplomats held their first talks since Joe Biden's election raised hopes of Washington returning to the agreement.

Russian police on Saturday arrested hundreds of protesters who took to the streets in temperatures as low as minus-50 C (minus-58 F) to demand the release of Alexei Navalny, the country's top opposition figure.

Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin's most prominent and durable foe, was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

Russian police on Friday said they would crackdown on opposition protests in support of the jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny at the weekend. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan began talks in Moscow on Thursday aimed at defusing the crisis in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib.

A negotiating team from the Taliban arrived Friday in Russia, a representative told The Associated Press, just days after U.S. President Donald Trump declared dead a deal with the insurgent group in Afghanistan.

Russian state news agency Tass cited the Taliban's Qatar-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as saying the delegation had held consultations with Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin's envoy for Afghanistan. The visit was confirmed to the AP by a Taliban official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

President Michel Aoun has agreed with Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil that he would be the only minister to accompany him on his first official visit to Russia on March 26, a media report said.

“Aoun's picking of Bassil exclusively and the decision not to form a delegation as per custom might be linked to the intention of the president and the foreign minister to keep their discussions with the Russian officials under wraps,” MTV reported on Tuesday.

Russian authorities were reluctant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution on Tuesday, with just low-key events being held to mark an uprising that launched more than 70 years of Communist rule. 

Russian police on Sunday detained around 200 activists gathering in central Moscow for an unauthorized protest against President Vladimir Putin, TASS state news agency and a monitoring group reported.

Russia defended its ally Damascus on Wednesday in the face of an international outcry over a suspected chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, saying a Syrian air strike hit a "terrorist warehouse."