Russia signed two agreements Thursday to finance and build Egypt's first nuclear power plant, in a ceremony attended by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Sergei Kirienko, director general of Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom, said the agreement is for the construction and operation of four 1,200 MW reactors, making the country "a regional leader in technology."

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday praised Russia's role in talks to end the Syria crisis and offered the prospect of better ties if Moscow focused military strikes on the Islamic State group.

Obama said Russia had been a "constructive partner in Vienna in trying to create a political transition," referring to international talks in Austria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday said that the attacks in Paris showed the need for his proposal for an international anti-terror coalition to be realized.

"I think that not only we are able, but it is also indispensable" to form an international anti-terrorist coalition, Putin told reporters after the G20 summit in the Turkish resort of Antalya.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Iran later this month, the Kremlin said Friday, as the two countries back Bashar Assad in Syria and Moscow looks to step up business ties after the deal over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Putin -- who last visited Iran in 2007 -- will head to Tehran for a forum of gas-exporting countries on November 23 and is expected to hold talks with the Iranian leadership, the Kremlin's top foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said.

Just a few weeks ago, economics student Firas Kiwani was planning to leave his home in the Syrian capital Damascus, convinced there was no future in his war-torn country.

But the launch last month of a Russian air campaign in support of the Syrian government has changed the 20-year-old's mind.

Top diplomats from Russia, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Turkey on Friday failed to make any major breakthrough on how to end the Syrian conflict, with the sides sharply at odds on the future of Bashar Assad.

But Moscow did seem to make progress with getting some more regional players on side, announcing with Jordan that the two countries would begin to "coordinate" their air operations over Syria. 

Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad traveled to Moscow for his first known foreign trip since the conflict broke out in his country in 2011, holding key talks on the crisis with President Vladimir Putin.

Assad, who last visited Russia in 2008, used the surprise visit on Tuesday evening to thank Putin for launching a campaign of air strikes in Syria last month, with the two leaders agreeing that military operations must be followed by political steps.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned violence in Afghanistan could spill over into ex-Soviet Central Asia, a day after the U.S. announced it would keep thousands of troops in the conflict-wracked country.

At a meeting in Kazakhstan, Putin and the leaders of ex-Soviet states agreed to create a joint task force to defend the region's borders in the event of a crisis.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday slammed Washington for refusing to share intelligence with Russia on Syria, accusing it of muddled thinking.

"I believe some of our partners simply have mush for brains," Putin said, expressing some of his strongest criticism yet of Washington's handling of the Syrian crisis.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned Monday he had no trust in Russia's Vladimir Putin and urged the army to prepare "for the worst" despite a new truce in the separatist east.

The pro-Western Ukrainian leader's comments to servicemen in Kiev came ahead of this week's Defenders of the Fatherland Day -- an occasion of special significance in the post-Soviet republic that views the 18-month uprising in the east as Russian "aggression".