Two and a half years after the Obama administration “reset” relations with Russia, House Speaker John Boehner says he’s troubled that the country seems to be slipping back into its Soviet-era ways.

Boehner pointed Tuesday to the recent news that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plans to return to the presidency after years as prime minister following his hand-picking successor Dmitri Medvedev.

“Within Russia, control is the order of the day, with key industries nationalized, the independent media repressed, and the loyal opposition beaten and jailed. Russia uses natural resources as a political weapon. And it plays ball with unstable and dangerous regimes,” Boehner said at the Heritage Foundation.

“In Russia’s use of old tools and old thinking, we see nothing short of an attempt to restore Soviet-style power and influence,” he said...

The Senate voted Tuesday to limit debate on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), paving the way for final ratification of the arms-control pact as key Republicans defied their party leadership and announced support for the accord.

The move to invoke cloture passed by a 67-28 vote after several days of debate and unsuccessful Republican attempts to add amendments to the U.S.-Russia arms agreement.

The Senate could take a final vote to formally ratify the treaty as early as Wednesday...

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's nuclear agency said Friday that it will load fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant next week, defying U.S. calls to hold off the start of the launch.

Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov said Friday that uranium fuel shipped by Russia will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Aug. 21, beginning the startup process.

"From that moment the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear-energy installation," he told The Associated Press...

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that the threat of sanctions against Iran would be counterproductive, resisting U.S. efforts to win agreement for measures if Iran fails to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

Lavrov spoke following talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is trying to gauge Moscow's willingness to join the U.S. in imposing sanctions if Iran fails to come clean on its nuclear activities.

Lavrov said Russia's position is that under current conditions even the threat of sanctions against Iran would be counterproductive...

Just hours after U.S. President-elect Barack Obama delivered his victory speech, Russia's leader delivered a scathing rebuke of U.S. policy and reminded Obama of some of the major foreign policy challenges he will face in office.

In his first state-of-the-nation speech since taking office earlier this year, President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russian missiles will be deployed against the planned U.S. missile shield in eastern Europe...

Russia's policies are putting it on a path to isolation and irrelevance, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.

Rice also said that Moscow's other behavior, including using oil and gas as a weapon, threatening countries with nuclear attack, selling arms to rogue states and political persecution of journalists and dissidents, paints a picture of "a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad."...

NATO has accused Russia of failing to honor the full terms of the cease-fire agreement brokered by the European Union last week aimed at ending the fighting in Georgia.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday that Russian forces were still inside Georgia despite the agreement to withdraw -- and despite Moscow having said they had begun doing so on Monday.

Russia's military says its withdrawal from Georgia has begun, but there has been no indication that such a pull back is happening.

"We're talking about pulling our troops away to the borders of South Ossetia. They will not be on Georgia territory," said Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian armed forces' deputy chief of staff, Monday...