Leaders of the CIS Union of Journalists said at their press conference that 23 journalists had been killed in CIS countries since the beginning of this year, including 11 killed in Chechnya alone. The union also announced the creation of a roundtable, including journalists' unions... MORE

The Moscow city court has rejected an appeal to release from custody former KGB captain Viktor Orekhov, who was recently sentenced to three years in prison for illegal possession of a weapon. Orekhov had been sentenced in Brezhnev's era to eight years in prison for... MORE

The Russian and Bulgarian prime ministers, Viktor Chernomyrdin and Zhan Videnov, conferred in Moscow September 18 on a project to build an oil pipeline from the Bulgarian port of Burgas on the Black Sea to the Greek port Alexandroupolis on the Aegean. "It is necessary... MORE

The director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Col. General Mikhail Barsukov, has announced the dismissal of his deputy, Lt. General. Igor Mezhakov; of the anti-terrorism department chief, Maj. General Anatoly Semenov; and of the head of the FSB's branch in Stavropol kray, Maj.-General. Romanov... MORE

Russia's Central Bank has announced that Interfax and five smaller Russian wire services will act as the bank's information agent on data concerning Russian commercial banks. The bank said that through these agencies, the central bank will publish information which may be of concern to... MORE

Boris Yeltsin has signed a decree on the creation of a Russian financial and banking union which includes all credit and banking institutions which own shares of state capital. The decree stipulates that the union's goal is to support the privatization of state and municipal... MORE

Oleg Lobov, Russian security council secretary and special envoy of president Yeltsin for Chechnya, and other senior Russian officials and pro-Moscow Chechens escaped injury when a remote-control bomb damaged a car in their convoy as it was traveling near Grozny airport. (4) In a special... MORE

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said on Russian TV that Moscow may unilaterally abandon the economic sanctions against rump Yugoslavia if NATO military action in Bosnia continues. (2) Communist Party Duma deputy Vitaly Sevastyanov, the veteran cosmonaut, called for Russia to deliver anti-aircraft missiles to Serbs,... MORE

Danish foreign minister Niels Helvig Petersen, at a news conference held shortly after returning from Estonia, voiced strong support for the Baltic states' becoming members of the European Union and NATO. He said that he had asked Estonia to apply for membership to the EU... MORE

Aleksa Buha, the would-be Bosnian Serb foreign minister, was received by Russia's first deputy foreign minister Igor Ivanov and other officials at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow on September 19. Buha was received despite an impromptu arrival seemingly without an invitation; he was said to... MORE