"We now have more than 50 percent of the vote," Zyuganov told yesterday's rally. "We must be on guard against the kind of falsification that took place in the referendum on the constitution," he added, referring to persistent rumors that millions of votes were falsified... MORE

Yesterday's May Day festivities in Moscow turned into rival demonstrations between the two leading presidential contestants. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov's complaint to the crowd that "the media are in the president's pocket" was borne out by Russian news reports, which appeared to overestimate the crowd... MORE

The new Chechen resistance leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, accompanied by Chief of Staff Aslan Maskhadov, met yesterday with several media correspondents to refute allegations about his death as "wishful thinking" of Moscow and Grozny authorities. Yandarbiev suggested that negotiations with Moscow can take place if the... MORE

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced April 30 that Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov would take part in a Council of Europe Ministers' Committee meeting scheduled for today and tomorrow. Primakov is to address the session with a report entitled "Russia and the Council of Europe." It... MORE

Addressing a leftist May Day rally in Kiev, the Ukrainian parliament's Socialist chairman Oleksandr Moroz expressed concern that NATO's eastward enlargement would lower the nuclear threshold. Moroz called for a European conference to convene in Kiev and work out security guarantees for Eastern Europe, including... MORE

Polish foreign minister Dariusz Rosati said in Copenhagen yesterday that while Warsaw sees no reason at present to station nuclear warheads on its territory, Poland would not bind itself with any pledges to refuse their deployment. (Itar-Tass, May 1) During an April 29 visit to... MORE

A Russian deputy foreign minister suggested yesterday that recent talks between the defense chiefs of Russia and Japan had been an icebreaker that could raise bilateral military relations to a new level. Aleksandr Panov said that as trust in the security sphere developed between Moscow... MORE

The foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan conferred yesterday in Almaty to prepare the meeting of the three countries' presidents due May 6. The ministers focused on the formation of the joint Central Asian peacekeeping battalion under UN auspices and drafted a note to... MORE

Possible militarization is far from Novorossiisk's only problem. The Krasnodar krai Duma (regional legislature) has imposed an "ecological" tax on export and transit shipping operations in Novorossiisk. Efforts by foreign companies and Russia's Oil and Power Ministry to have the tax rescinded have failed thus... MORE

Russian plans to rebase some of the Black Sea Fleet's warships in Novorossiisk worries oil and commercial interests as well as the city's authorities. They anticipate that such a move would result in interference with commercial shipping, reduction of the port's cargo handling capacity, shrinkage... MORE