ANDREW KRAMER

Officials from 18 oil-producing nations failed Sunday to reach a deal to freeze oil production at current levels.

Six rescue workers were killed Sunday in a failed attempt to reach 26 stranded miners at a coal mine in Russia. The trapped miners were also declared dead.

A senior Russian government official on Tuesday formally presented to the United Nations his country’s claim to Arctic Ocean seabed, including an area under the North Pole.

Alternately pugnacious and conciliatory, with his customary swagger and salty language, President Vladimir Putin held forth on a broad array of topics in his traditional year-end news conference on Thursday, even throwing in a glowing assessment of Donald Trump.

A 15-month inquiry into the disintegration of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in the skies over eastern Ukraine has concluded that the aircraft was most likely attacked from the ground by a Russian-made missile, Dutch air accident investigators said Tuesday.

Backed by Russian warplanes, the Syrian army began a ground offensive Wednesday against rebel forces in northern Hama province, while the Kremlin said it had fired 26 cruise missiles on Syrian targets from naval vessels in the Caspian Sea.

Combatants in the eastern Ukraine war ignored an impending cease-fire and escalated fighting Friday, as Russian-backed rebels sought to capture an important railway hub before the truce agreement takes effect.

The governments of the five countries with coastline on the Arctic have concluded that enough of the polar ice cap now melts regularly in the summertime that an agreement regulating commercial fishing near the North Pole is warranted.

Ever since the meteor exploded somewhere over this impoverished Siberian town, Larisa V. Briyukova wondered what to do with the fist-size stone she found under a hole in the roof tiles of her woodshed.