Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry says several dozen railcars carrying gas have derailed and caught fire northeast of Moscow, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of local resident.

The ministry said that the accident occurred Wednesday at a railway station in the city of Kirov, about 800 kilometers (some 500 miles) northeast of Moscow, when 32 cars loaded with gas condensate derailed and caught fire. It said no one was hurt.

Russia said Tuesday that Syria would ship out another stockpile of chemical weapons this month, as the opposition sought to persuade Moscow to push for a transitional government for the war-scarred nation.

Russia, traditionally a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, downplayed concerns that the regime was falling behind in the timetable to remove its chemical weapons -- an agreement reached in September with Moscow and Washington that averted U.S. military strikes.

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.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem will visit Russia ahead of the Geneva 2 peace talks on the crisis due to begin in Switzerland later this month, Damascus's ambassador to Moscow said Monday.

"He will be in Moscow prior to Geneva 2," Riyad Haddad told the Interfax news agency, without specifying the date.

Russia was Friday to bury Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the iconic AK-47 assault rifle that was the favored weapon of guerrillas worldwide, at a newly-opened cemetery for national heroes.

Kalashnikov, who died on Monday at the age of 94, was to receive a funeral with full state honors and be buried at the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery (FVMK) in Mytishchi outside Moscow, the defense ministry said.

Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky is set to reunite with his wife Inna and their three children in Berlin on Christmas Eve after spending 10 years in a Russian jail, his spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

"The family is coming today," spokeswoman Olga Pispanen told AFP. "They have not been together for 10 years."

Russia on Friday blocked a U.S.-drafted U.N. Security Council statement condemning the Syrian government's increasing military offensive on Aleppo, diplomats said.

The move heightened diplomatic tensions ahead of a key Russia-U.S.-U.N. meeting in Geneva on Friday on organizing an international Syria peace conference.

The German government will study whether U.S. fugitive leaker Edward Snowden can be questioned in Russia, as it sought Wednesday to calm tensions with London and Washington over spy allegations.

Members of a German parliamentary committee overseeing the secret services agreed to ask the government to examine the possibility of Snowden answering questions in Moscow, provided it does not create "difficulties" for him there, its chairman Thomas Oppermann said.

About 10,000 Russian nationalists marched in Moscow on Monday in an annual show of anger against the presence of Muslim migrants that has previously escalated into violence.

The city-sanctioned demonstration was staged in the same blue-collar region on the city's outskirts that saw riots break out three weeks ago over a stabbing murder blamed on a citizen of Azerbaijan.

Several thousand Russians marched through central Moscow on Sunday in a new protest at President Vladimir Putin's rule and a judicial crackdown against opponents.

Chanting "Putin is a thief" and "Freedom to political prisoners!", protesters marched with flags and portraits of people seen as victims of political persecution, such as jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, members of punk band Pussy Riot, and the Greenpeace Arctic crew.