Claiming that the Kremlin has transferred over 100 billion rubles to Russia's Northern Fleet, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets yesterday assured naval officers in Murmansk that the government was prepared to take several additional steps to ease the fleet's financial problems. According to Soskovets,... MORE

The group of thirteen leading Russian financiers who caused such a stir when, on April 26, they appealed to the leading presidential candidates to negotiate a pre-election compromise, have issued another statement. "Recent developments have increased our concern over Russia's future," they say. Referring to... MORE

In an interview with the magazine Delovie lyudi (Business People), Yeltsin brushed aside calls for constitutional amendments abolishing the post of president or limiting its powers. (The Communist party is committed to the eventual abolition of the presidency as an institution; Grigory Yavlinsky's Yabloko party... MORE

Russia and Britain faced off yesterday in an escalating spy row redolent of the Cold War, and today Moscow announced that it would expel nine British diplomats for allegedly running a spy ring. Britain's Foreign Office categorically denied the charges and suggested that London would... MORE

The management of Uzbekneftgaz and senior executives of the U.S. company UNOCAL and Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil signed in Tashkent yesterday agreements of intent to prospect and develop oil and gas deposits in Uzbekistan and to build export pipelines. President Islam Karimov told the visiting... MORE

A troubled oil-for-sugar barter deal between Russia and Cuba has been suspended, the Russian partner announced in Moscow yesterday. A spokesman for Alfa-Eco blamed the Cuban side for failing to fulfill the terms of the original contract. (See Monitor, April 29) The deal called for... MORE

The Russian Communist party head met yesterday in Bonn with leaders from Germany's parliamentary parties , while government officials reportedly joined a separate off-the-record meeting between Gennady Zyuganov and some 40 German bankers and industrialists. (See Monitor, May 3) Zyuganov acknowledged that Bonn might feel... MORE

Inflation in Russia dropped to 2.2 percent in April, compared with 2.8 percent in February and March, the State Statistics Committee announced yesterday. This is the lowest monthly rate since Russia launched its reforms in January 1992. (Interfax, May 6) Russo-Chinese Defense Talks in Moscow.

Russian General Staff Chief Mikhail Kolesnikov and his Chinese counterpart, Fu Quanyou, were scheduled yesterday to sign a protocol to a 1993 Sino-Russian military agreement on military-technical cooperation. Fu Quanyou also held a closed door meeting with Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev at which troop... MORE

NATO's peace implementation force (IFOR) reported yesterday that one Russian soldier had been shot dead and another was critically wounded in the northeastern sector of Bosnia patrolled by a Russian peacekeeping brigade. The IFOR statement said that there had been "no evidence of hostile fire"... MORE