Over the past two years Russia has been able to replace only 20 percent of the 300 merchant ships it has decommissioned. Valery Bykov, head of the Sea Shipping Service, told a Moscow meeting yesterday that another 80 ships would go out of service this... MORE

Talks in Moscow between Russian and Mexican officials appear to have boosted bilateral relations. On January 28 the foreign ministers of the two countries signed a declaration on principals of bilateral relations and cooperation. A day earlier, Russia's industry minister and Mexico's foreign minister agreed... MORE

Shoppers in the Russian city of Voronezh are snapping up supplies of a new brand of locally produced macaroni. According to the label, the macaroni contains beta-carotene and protein additives that help protect against cancer and cardio-vascular disease. (Itar-Tass, January 22) Meanwhile, in the Pechora... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin celebrates his 66th birthday tomorrow, February 1. He is already well over the average life expectancy for a Russian male, which stands at 58 years (compared with 72 years for women). According to a German intelligence report leaked to a Russian newspaper... MORE

NATO secretary-general Javier Solana has told Belarusan president Aleksandr Lukashenko that the alliance could not support the latter's proposal for a nuclear weapons free zone in Central and Eastern Europe. Solana praised Belarus for getting rid of all its former Soviet nuclear weapons and reiterated... MORE

Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, described by the FBI as among the most powerful Russian crime bosses in the U.S., was sentenced on January 29 to almost ten years in prison on charges of attempted extortion and seeking to gain legal status in the U.S. through a... MORE

The Russian airline Transaero was reported yesterday to be part of a group bidding to take over the financially troubled U.S. airline TWA. According to a report in USA Today, Transaero is working with a New Jersey investment firm, Strategic Capital Group. The deal would... MORE

Russian Defense Council secretary Yuri Baturin said yesterday that he was "greatly bewildered" by the plans to redeploy U.S. troops from Okinawa to the main Japanese islands. He complained that while Russia was reducing its forces in the Far East, the U.S. and Japan were... MORE

The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan yesterday completed the "Trial of the Generals" and its prosecution of other participants in the July 1995 abortive attempt to assassinate President Haidar Aliev and to seize power. The prosecution linked the ringleaders to former Communist leader Ayaz Mutalibov, now... MORE

Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma has suspended a January 23 decision by the Crimean parliament to dismiss the peninsula's Kiev-backed prime minister, Arkady Demidenko, and to replace his government with a new Council of Ministers. Saying that Crimea's Supreme Soviet had exceeded its powers under the... MORE