. Duma deputy and businessman Sergei Markidonov was shot to death yesterday while campaigning for reelection in the Siberian city of Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky. Police said that the 34-year-old politician may have been killed in a drunken row, or by accident, by his bodyguard, who also died... MORE

In his recent news conference for Russian and foreign correspondents, a full transcript of which appears in the latest issue of a leading pro-democratic Moscow weekly, Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev made the following comment about Russia's foreign policy tradition: "You suffer a bit from schizophrenia.... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has released Col. General Vasily Vorobiev from his post as head of the Defense Ministry's Main Military Budget and Finance Department, for alleged "serious financial improprieties and unsatisfactorily implementing government resolutions." Specifically, he was charged with being responsible for delays in financing... MORE

Journalist Robert Bykov reports that twice earlier this month, pilots of the Balashov Military College of Transport aviation were unable to land a plane carrying journalists at Chkalov Airbase, one of the country's safest. Both times they had to return to the Balashov military base.... MORE

Local trade union activists and employees from the Nuclear Submarine Shipbuilding Center from Severodvinsk picketed the federal government's offices in Moscow, demanding that the government pay its debts to the shipbuilders for the state order which has been delivered. The protesters have not received wages... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin left the hospital today after a month of treatment for a heart complaint. Spokesman Sergei Medvedev refused to say whether Yeltsin, now under supervision at the Barvikha sanatorium, would be able to take part in Russia's election campaign. "The president will... MORE

Parliament chairman Oleksandr Moroz describes Ukraine's draft constitution as far from complete and potentially divisive. In media interviews this week, Moroz has objected to the concentration of executive powers in the president's hands, in the absence of a clearly defined role for the prime minister.... MORE

The presidentsof Ukraine and Latvia, Leonid Kuchma and Guntis Ulmanis, told a joint news conference in Kiev November 22 that they are interested in creating a Baltic-Black Sea "economic space." During Ulmanis' two-day visit the sides agreed to create a joint commission to implement agreements... MORE

Valentina Matvienko, head of a Russian Ministry section for relations with federation regions and public organizations and movements, has told a Moscow briefing that Russian citizens residing in the "near abroad" fear persecution by local authorities if they take part in next month's elections to... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has ordered urgent measures to stiffen currency controls, which his economic aide Aleksandr Livshits describes as designed to combat capital flight via fake import contracts. Livshits said the measure was the first of a series intended to bring order to the movement... MORE