The White House said Thursday it would review plans for a U.S.-Russia presidential summit in early September after Moscow's decision to grant asylum to U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

"We're extremely disappointed," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. "We're evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this and other issues."

Fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden on Thursday left the Moscow airport where he has been holed up for over a month, after being granted one year's asylum in Russia, his lawyer said.

Russia's shock decision to award Snowden asylum just two weeks after the application was made risks a diplomatic row with the United States, which had previously described such a prospect as "deeply disappointing".

Russian police have arrested 1,200 Vietnamese people in a sweatshop raid in northeastern Moscow where the illegal immigrants were living in squalid conditions.

"The workers lived in insanitary conditions with their families including pregnant women and unweaned babies," said police after the operation on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday held a rare and previously unannounced meeting with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan to discuss the situation in the Middle East, the Kremlin said.

"A wide number of questions regarding Saudi-Russia relations were discussed as well as the situation in North Africa and the Middle East," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

Edward Snowden's father is seeking a Russian visa and plans to visit his fugitive son in Moscow soon, the lawyer helping the U.S. intelligence leaker with his Russian asylum application said Wednesday.

The plan by Lon Snowden was revealed after the father of the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor gave an interview to Russian television and said he wanted to see his son to be safe.

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn declared in an interview broadcast Wednesday on Russian television that his political career was over and he was instead working as an economic adviser.

"Politics for me is in the past," Strauss-Kahn, who resigned from the IMF's top job in 2011 after being accused of sexual assault in a New York hotel, told state news channel Rossiya 24 in an interview.

The regime's new victory in Homs and rebel advances in the north and south of Syria are signs that both sides are looking to make headway before much-touted peace talks.

"Having consolidated its victory in Homs, the regime controls all the area stretching from Damascus to the coast," says analyst Karim Bitar of the French Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden's leaks regarding intelligence surveillance programs in the world showed Russia "nothing new", but hastened its drive to ensure cyber-security, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Monday.

"Our technology experts didn't hear anything unexpected, it's just the naked truth that we already knew from other sources," Rogozin told journalists regarding the leaks made by the ex-National Security Agency contractor, who is awaiting the result of his Russian asylum application in a Moscow airport.

Three members of the feminist movement Femen and their photographer were abducted in Kiev Saturday before a planned protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Ukraine, the group said.

The alleged attack on a group known for their bare-breasted protests took place as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych welcomed his Russian counterpart, Serbian leader Tomislav Nicolic and Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti for politically sensitive religious festivities in the capital Kiev.

The Kremlin on Friday denied the validity of a photograph published on the Internet claiming to show President Vladimir Putin helping arrest a dissident in the former Soviet Union while he was a KGB agent.

The picture, circulated by a Russian blogger and already widely viewed, shows a man resembling Putin looking on as a democratic rights activist is roughly arrested.