Local elections were held yesterday in three Russian regions and, as expected, incumbents were victorious in all three. In Tyumen oblast in western Siberia, incumbent governor Leonid Roketsky was reelected with 58.8 percent of the vote while his opponent, a banker, gained 32.9 percent. Roketsky's... MORE

When Chinese prime minister Li Peng visited Moscow in late December he signed a secret arms deal to buy two Russian Sovremenny-class guided-missile destroyers, the Washington Times said on January 10. The ships will be equipped with advanced SS-N-22 anti-ship cruise missiles. The deal was... MORE

Saying that the constitution "is not an icon," the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Yegor Stroev, has called for the constitution to be amended to give more power to parliament. (NTV, Interfax, January 10) Stroev referred to the wide powers to... MORE

Tensions provoked by a Russian missile deal with Cyprus deepened over the weekend as both Washington and Moscow criticized the Turkish government for threatening military action against Cyprus as a possible response. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Tarasov told reporters on January 11 that Russia... MORE

Boris Yeltsin's doctors, who now admit that what was first described as a cold is in fact double pneumonia, said yesterday that the Russian president's condition was slightly improved. But chief Kremlin doctor Sergei Mironov said it was too early to say the crisis had... MORE

Arkady Volsky, the politically influential head of Russia's Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, claims that Russia and Latvia are holding talks on the Russian purchase of its former naval base in Liepaja. Volsky told a news conference in Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad that it would be "inexcusable if... MORE

Lt. Gen. Alyaksandr Chumakau, chief of staff and acting Defense Minister of the Belarusan armed forces, was appointed defense minister on Saturday by President Alexander Lukashenko. Chumakau succeeds Lt. Gen. Leanid Maltseu, who was fired on November 1 for allegedly appearing drunk at a public... MORE

Sources at the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow is willing in principle to take back some 10 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that had been left in Georgia following the breakup of the USSR, but that "some complicated organizational and technical" problems remain to... MORE

Russian border guards have turned back a group of Abkhazian deputies who were seeking to cross the land border into Russia in order to fly from there to an "international meeting" in the US. Abkhazia's legislature issued an official protest against the Russian border guards'... MORE

The threat posed by oil slicks from a wrecked Russian tanker took on a new dimension over the weekend as Japanese emergency crews worked to prevent the oil from clogging the cooling systems of a complex of seaside nuclear reactors. Japanese nuclear energy officials said... MORE