The Ukrainian parliament voted overwhelmingly on September 19 to include gas and oil pipelines on the list of enterprises exempt from privatization. In addition the parliament asked the government and the Prosecutor's Office to investigate the legality and background of the formation of the Gaztranzit... MORE

Federation Council chairman Vladimir Shumeiko called for an increase in military spending and a revised conception of military budgeting in the 1996 state budget. In a letter to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Shumeiko argued that interests of defense and national security must gain first priority.... MORE

Russia needs at least $300 million to bring civil aviation out of its present crisis, deputy director of the Air Transport Department Valery Kasyanenko told a September 11 roundtable conference on state regulation of the federal civil air system. According to Kasyanenko, Russia should replace... MORE

China's Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, on a visit to Russia, is flying to Sochi for a previously unscheduled meeting with President Boris Yeltsin. Officials in the Russian general staff say that work is under way to prepare joint armaments projects, such as deliveries of Russian... MORE

A local power plant cut off electricity yesterday to a nuclear submarine base of the Northern Fleet near Murmansk, nearly triggering an accident. The base is home to decommissioned submarines with functioning nuclear reactors that are waiting to be scrapped. The vessels' on-board generators failed... MORE

Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma said yesterday that the introduction of the new Ukrainian currency, the hryvna, would be delayed from next month until some time next year. "All the conditions [for its introduction] were 100 percent there in the summer, but we waited too long,"... MORE

Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said yesterday that Moscow would not drop its opposition to an enlargement of NATO in exchange for the Western alliance's offer to ease limits on Russia's forces under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. "We oppose NATO expansion and there... MORE

Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister and leader of the "Russia's Democratic Choice" party, told UPI September 21 that, in his view, the upcoming parliamentary elections are the last chance for the nationalists and communists, and that in the absence of a nationalist power grab, the... MORE

Russian negotiators Vyacheslav Mikhailov and Arkady Volsky insisted yesterday that there would be no peace in Chechnya until Dudayev is no longer surrounded by arms. Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev's spokesman Movladi Udugov retorted that Chechen forces are not in a position to comply with the... MORE

A looming national strike of the Russian Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Unions has now been scheduled to commence November 1. The strike would affect all 425 Russian airlines, according to Anatoly Brylov, deputy director general of Aeroflot-Russian Airlines. (15) Representatives of the Air Traffic... MORE