Security guards at the Rosvooruzheniye state-owned arms export company in Moscow found a bomb in a corridor leading to the managing director's reception room on the night of October 8. The device, identified as an OZM-72 anti-personnel fragmentation mine, was reportedly removed from the building... MORE

Russian interior minister Anatoly Kulikov has called for the future status of Chechnya to be decided by means of a national referendum. (Interfax, October 10) Kulikov is a self-professed member of the "party of war," which gives no quarter in the battle against Chechen secession.... MORE

Russian prosecutor general Yuri Skuratov has declared that from a legal standpoint the Khasavyurt accords, putting an end to the fighting in Chechnya, contradict the Russian Constitution on a number of points. The accords cannot, therefore, serve as the legal basis for defining relations between... MORE

. Prosecutor General Skuratov said that one of the problems with the Khasavyurt accords was that they were signed with Chechen chief-of-staff Aslan Maskhadov, for whom an arrest warrant is outstanding. Skuratov said his office has no power to cancel the warrants issued for the... MORE

. The most battleworthy ships of Ukraine's nascent navy, the Hetman Sahaydachny and the Kostyantyn Olshansky, exercised in the central Mediterranean jointly with a U.S. naval task force and with French and Italian naval aviation. The two Ukrainian ships are headed for home from a... MORE

Azerbaijan's Supreme Court yesterday began the trial of Generals Vahid Musaev, Rafig Agaev, and Shahin Musaev -- along with 20 other codefendants -- involved in the June 1995 conspiracy to assassinate President Haidar Aliev and seize power. Some of the plotters attempted to shoot down... MORE

Deputy foreign ministers of the five Caspian countries completed three days of talks on the legal status of the Caspian Sea in Moscow yesterday. The talks failed in their stated purpose of preparing a Caspian Foreign Ministers' Conference to work out that legal status. Further... MORE

Inflation went up sharply in Russia during the first week of October, with consumer prices rising 0.5 percent according to official government statistics. The rise comes in marked contrast to the downward trend registered in September, when prices rose at an average weekly rate of... MORE

A Canadian firm has signed a cooperation agreement with Russia's Komplex Scientific and Technical Center to use the Russian "Start" launch vehicle to place satellites in orbit from a space complex in Northern Canada. Akjuit Aerospace hopes to make its first launch from SpacePort Canada,... MORE

Crimea's Supreme Soviet yesterday elected Vasily Kiselev as speaker in place of Yevhen Suprunyuk, who was forced to resign earlier in the week after pro-Russian deputies accused him of being too accommodating to Kiev. The 48-year-old Kiselev, a former farm director, is a member of... MORE