After talks in Washington with the International Monetary Fund's management, Ukrainian prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko said that nine credit programs to support Ukrainian economic reforms, including a currency stabilization credit, were agreed upon in principle. Lazarenko expects the credits to tide Ukraine over into the... MORE

In Tbilisi over the weekend, the IMF's first deputy managing director Stanley Fischer expressed confidence that the Georgian government "will not deviate from the chosen path of reforms." Praising the government for resisting inflation and maintaining the value of the national currency, Fisher urged Tbilisi... MORE

Cases of death of malnutrition have been recorded among the unemployed and their families in Arkhangelsk oblast. Unemployment in the region is currently 8.5 percent, one of the highest rates in the country. (Itar-Tass, July 26) Wives Ground Air Force Regiment.

The disgruntled wives of pilots serving in an Air Force regiment near the city of Kursk have managed to ground the unit's aircraft, Russian TV reported July 26. The women formed human chains on the regiment's runway to protest the fact that their husbands have... MORE

Three Russian soldiers were officially reported killed yesterday in Bamut, which -- as it now transpires -- the Chechen fighters never left but remained entrenched in underground bunkers in part of the village. In Grozny, the local OMON broke up a July 26 a pro-independence... MORE

Platon Obukhov, the 28-year-old diplomat named by a Russian newspaper last week as the suspected spy in this spring's espionage scandal with London, told reporters July 27 that he had been recruited while abroad by British agents who threatened him with compromising materials. Russian TV... MORE

A delegation of Russian parliamentarians, led by Duma speaker Gennady Seleznev, completed an official visit to Cuba on July 28. According to Seleznev, Cuban leader Fidel Castro did not say a "single word reproaching Russia" during a meeting with the delegation, nor did he inquire... MORE

Russian leaders on July 27 denounced the bombing at the Olympic games in Atlanta as "barbaric" and called for an intensification of international efforts to fight terrorism. Ministers from the Group of Seven countries and Russia are scheduled to meet tomorrow in Paris to discuss... MORE

Ten thousand miners continue to strike for unpaid wages in Primorsky krai in Russia's far east. Over the weekend, the regional prosecutor asked the courts to declare the strikes illegal. The miners insist that their cause is just, and that it was not the workers... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin has rejected two draft defense laws -- "on military reform" and "on the Security Council Military Committee" -- sent to him by the Duma. Yeltsin argued that certain measures spelled out in the laws would intrude upon the powers of the... MORE