Ecuador said Tuesday it hopes Russia will grant U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden temporary asylum, saying conditions do not permit his travel to Latin America.

"Let's hope it is granted and that in the meantime conditions are established to ensure respect for his rights, as contemplated in all the international treaties," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday inspected huge military exercises Russia's army is carrying out close to the borders with Japan and China, in one of its biggest shows of force in the Asia-Pacific region of recent years.

Thousands of tanks, 160,000 servicemen, 130 aircraft and 70 ships are involved in manoeuvres which extend over a vast area from southeastern Siberia on the border with China to Sakhalin Island north of Japan.

Fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden applied Tuesday for temporary asylum in Russia, a pro-Kremlin lawyer said, after President Vladimir Putin accused Washington of "trapping" him in the country.

Snowden, wanted by the United States for revealing sensational details of its vast spying operations, is now spending a fourth week in the transit lounge at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport without ever crossing the Russian border.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday accused the United States of trapping U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden in Moscow, saying he would leave Russia as soon as possible.

"As soon as there's the chance to move somewhere he will certainly do this," Putin said in his first public remarks since Snowden summoned several rights activists and lawyers for a dramatic meeting Friday at state-controlled Sheremetyevo airport.

Edward Snowden, the fugitive intelligence leaker wanted by the United States, has still not applied for temporary asylum in Russia despite vowing to do so last week, officials said Monday.

Snowden made his first public statement in nearly three weeks last Friday as he met with a group of Russian rights activists and pro-Kremlin figures in the Moscow airport where he had been marooned since June 23 after flying in from Hong Kong.

Moscow wants to exchange a married couple of Russian spies jailed this month in Germany for at least one convict jailed in Russia on charges of spying for the West, a report said Monday.

Russia's Kommersant newspaper said that the Russian secret services wanted to bring the pair -- known only by their code names Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag -- back home to Russia after decades as "sleepers" in Germany.

Four police were shot dead on Sunday in an ambush by unknown gunmen in Russia's violence-plagued Caucasus region of Dagestan, the local interior ministry said.

The police drove to the village of Burshi where they had received a report of a robbery, and were shot dead as they were leaving the area, Russian news agencies quoted the Interior Ministry as saying.

An horrific accident that left 18 people dead and at least 40 injured outside Moscow was caused when a gravel truck smashed a bus full of passengers into two pieces, officials said.

The emergencies ministry had raised the death toll to 18 after several badly injured victims died in hospital.

Around 65,000 people have queued for hours in Saint Petersburg to see a religious relic brought from Greece, officials said Saturday, in the latest sign of the Russian Orthodox Church's influence in post-Soviet Russia.

The cross of Saint Andrew -- said to be a relic of the X-shaped cross on which Andrew the Apostle was crucified -- was placed in Saint Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral on Thursday after arriving from its historic home in Patras in Greece.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday, after the White House warned Moscow not to give fugitive leaker Edward Snowden a "propaganda platform" by granting him asylum.

The call came after Snowden said he wanted to claim temporary refuge in Russia, where he has been staying in an airport transfer lounge, until he could figure out how to reach permanent asylum in South America.