On November 3 in Moscow, the prime ministers of Russia and Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin and Evhen Marchuk, finalized an agreement on Russian gas supplies to Ukraine in 1996. According to Russian media reports, Russia's Gazprom will deliver 50 billion cubic meters, down from 52 billion... MORE

On November 4, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin retracted the claim he had made the day before that, during President Yeltsin's hospitalization, he would supervise the work of the "power ministries." (Normally these four ministries -- defense, security, foreign and internal affairs -- report directly... MORE

On November 4, Russia's Supreme Court ordered the Central Electoral Commission (TsIK) to register the list of candidates of the reformist Yabloko movement. The day before, the court had ordered the TsIK to register the list of the nationalist Derzhava movement, overturning the commission's earlier... MORE

The Office of the Patriarch of All-Russia and Moscow has reported the death from a heart attack November 2 of the Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev) of St. Petersburg and Ladoga. A Russian born in southern Ukraine, Ioann became Metropolitan of St. Petersburg in 1990. (2) Ioann... MORE

Georgia's head of state and former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze declared victory on Monday in Georgia's presidential election, saying he had won backing for a program for "saving the country." Election officials in the turbulent Transcaucasus state were still counting the votes from Sunday's... MORE

Iraq's National Assembly has ratified an agreement to cooperate in oil and gas development with Russia, the official al-Qadissiya newspaper reported on Monday. Russia is an advocate of a gradual easing of United Nations sanctions on Iraq and Baghdad and is in turn giving Russian... MORE

Defense Minister Pavel Grachev said over the weekend that "a multinational division of Russia, the United States and other countries ready to participate in the Bosnian operation, is a variant acceptable to Moscow." Grachev was apparently referring to the auxiliary operation, not the main one... MORE

Boris Yeltsin, recovering in the hospital from a heart problem, looks well and fit enough to work, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets said after meeting him on Monday. "Boris Yeltsin looks fine and absolutely capable of working," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Soskovets as saying.... MORE

Yeltsin also announced he was sending Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to represent Russia at Rabin's burial on Monday on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl. "We have lost a friend who did much while being at the head of the government and state," Chernomyrdin was quoted by Itar-Tass... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin said on Sunday he was "shaken" by the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin but that he was convinced it would not derail the Middle East peace process. Yeltsin's statement, which was issued by the presidential press service, said the... MORE