... Ukraine has decided against turning its giant gas storage sites over to a Russian-dominated joint company in payment for past Russian gas deliveries. Under a Russian plan which Ukraine had tentatively accepted in March, the Bilche-Uhersko and Bohorodchany storage depots, ranked as Europe's largest... MORE

The new editors of Nezavisimaya gazeta said September 11 that the newspaper's former editor-in-chief and founder, Vitaly Tretyakov, had illegally tried to occupy the paper's premises and to prevent its publication under new management. They said that Tretyakov, who had been released from his duties... MORE

The head of the public relations office of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Yuri Kobaladze, has denied a story published in the Washington Times last week, which stated that his service was teaching the Iranians the techniques and methods of special operations. Kobaladze said... MORE

. Duma chairman Ivan Rybkin has asked the Prosecutor General's Office to investigate the melee on the Duma's floor involving democratic deputies Father Gleb Yakunin and Evgenia Tishkovskaya, and ultranationalist parliamentarians Nikolai Lysenko and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Meanwhile, Tishkovskaya said that she would sue Zhirinovsky for... MORE

Minister of Internal Affairs Anatoly Kulikov says that 544 officers of his service were accused of corruption and abuse of power in the first six months of this year. Kulikov also revealed that, to restrain corruption in his ministry, he is going to create a... MORE

The Ivan Rybkin electoral bloc, or "left-of-center" side of the "party of power," has lost one of its major components, the My Fatherland Movement. In a statement issued September 12, the movement's leaders accused Rybkin of a "bizarre unwillingness to constructively criticize the executive branch."... MORE

. The top three places in the St. Petersburg division of "Russia is Our Home" will be held by former KGB foreign intelligence colonel Vladimir Putin; by the chairman of the regional association of commercial banks, Sergei Popov; and by the wife of St. Petersburg... MORE

Agrarian Party leader Mikhail Lapshin sharply attacked Viktor Chernomyrdin's "Russia is Our Home" bloc for incorporating Lt. General Lev Rokhlin on its election list. Lapshin charged that Chernomyrdin had lost all sense of shame by using Rokhlin, "Executioner of Chechnya," whose hands were stained with... MORE

. Viktor Ilyukhin, one of the Communist faction's leaders in the Duma and chairman of its Committee on Security Affairs, has accused Federation Council speaker Vladimir Shumeiko of laundering his money in a pyramid scheme. According to Ilyukhin, recently-arrested Valentina Solovieva, who had operated one... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has agreed to most of the proposals submitted to him by a consortium of Russia's eight biggest banks. The deal's main provision is a transfer of some of the enterprises to be privatized this year to the banks' management. In exchange, the... MORE