The head of the Belarus State Press Committee said on television over the weekend that the operating license of the Minsk newspaper Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta has been withdrawn. The Russian-language newspaper had previously received five warnings about articles criticizing President Aleksandr Lukashenko's policies, and since... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin said on Russian Television on Sunday evening that he was sure he would win an outright victory in the first round of the presidential election June 16. Yeltsin told an interviewer that he was so confident of exceeding 50 percent in the... MORE

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov says he and his running-mate, Valery Shantsev, will remain in the campaign for mayor and deputy mayor of Moscow on June 16. Shantsev was seriously wounded June 7 when a bomb exploded outside his Moscow apartment, and is in critical but... MORE

President Yeltsin will shortly sign into law the new Criminal Code adopted by the Russian parliament last week, and which is to enter into force on January 1 next year. Yeltsin's legal aide Mikhail Krasnov recalled that earlier drafts were rejected by the president but... MORE

France and Russia reached an agreement in Paris June 7 under which Moscow will supply highly enriched uranium over a nine-year period to French scientific research centers located in Grenoble and Saclay. The value of the uranium was not disclosed. As part of the deal... MORE

A visiting Cuban government leader said June 7 that meetings with Russia's foreign minister and with representatives of all factions in the Russian Duma had convinced him that support for improved relations with Cuba exists across the Russian political spectrum. All of these groups had... MORE

Russian lost at least six soldiers killed and as many wounded in mine explosions and clashes over the weekend, according to official reports this morning. Russian forces for their part attacked resistance positions in Shali. The administrative chief for Urus-Martan district, working for the Grozny... MORE

Maj. Generals Yevgeny Skobelev and Aleksandr Rogov of the 58th Army in North Caucasus died in an as yet unexplained road accident in Kabardino-Balkaria at the weekend. The 58th Army is headquartered in North Ossetia and has units engaged in combat in Chechnya. (Itar-Tass, June... MORE

The management of Russia's Central Bank gave Yeltsin's campaign a boost over the weekend by agreeing to hand over 5 trillion rubles (nearly $1 billion) from the bank's 1994 profits to the federal budget. Yeltsin wants the money to cover election promises to pay vacation... MORE

Belarus parliament chairman Semyon Sharetsky told the chamber yesterday that President Aleksandr Lukashenko's style of rule is more authoritarian compared to the former Soviet system. Sharetsky described the president as "hotheaded, mistrustful toward others, and eager to take sole control of everything." Sharetsky specifically criticized... MORE