859 industrialstrikes took place in the first five months of 1995, a 120 percentincrease over the same period in 1994, Trud reported July25. Most of the strikes concerned the failure of enterprises topay their workers: more than 36,000 enterprises and organizationshave withheld more than 6.5... MORE

Almost 62,000 Russians took their own lives last year, whilenearly 48,000 people were murdered in the country, Komsomolskayapravda said July 25. Meanwhile, Moscow interior departmentchief Maj. Gen. Boris Kondrashov said that crime in general wasrising in his city and not falling as Moscow mayor Yuri... MORE

The leadersof Russia's largest banks met near Moscow July 25 to express theirconcerns about the rising number of unsolved murders of bankersin the Russian Federation, NTV reported. (There have been over400 assaults on Russian bankers since January 1995, Interfax reportedJuly 26.) The bankers complained that... MORE

Russian troops onGeorgian border opposite Abkhazia reinforced border controls andset up additional posts at Adler airport and at Black Sea portsin Abkhaz-controlled territory, effective July 24, Russian mediareported. The Russian command said that the measures were intendedto block movement of "bandit detachments" and arms shipmentsfrom... MORE

Becauseof personnel cutbacks, many servicemen in Russia's Strategic RocketForces now must work more than 100 hours a week, Krasnaya zvezdareported July 27. That is an even higher figure than the paperhad reported earlier.

Despite a July11 agreement between the presidents of North Ossetia and Ingushetiaon the principles for resolving their republics' territorial dispute,their representatives failed to make progress at a July 25 negotiatingsession, Interfax reported. The Ingush delegation demanded thatIngush refugees be repatriated by the end of 1995... MORE

New Federal SecurityService chief Mikhail Barsukov has had illegal contacts with theCIA and with other Western special services, retired KGB officerAleksandr Kazantsev told Moskovskiye novosti (no. 50).Kazantsev said that Barsukov had established these links in orderto obtain bugging devices to eavesdrop on Yeltsin's opponentsand associates.... MORE

Aleksandr Livshits, Yeltsin's economic advisor and a frequentcheerleader on the Russian economic situation, told Russian televisionJuly 25 that the Russian economy had stopped its decline, buthe acknowledged that it would not soon begin to grow. Moreover,he said that much of the growth taking place in... MORE

Arguing that "he who controls the Arctic controls theworld, Rear Admiral Valeriy Aleksin told Ogonek (no. 29)that Moscow and the West will compete in the Arctic region intothe next century and that this competition must define the constructionof a new Russian navy. He said that... MORE

PrimeMinister Viktor Chernomyrdin has named former Soviet media officialIvan Laptev to replace Sergei Igryunov as chairman of the StateCommittee for the Press, Itar-Tass reported July 26. A close associateof Mikhail Gorbachev, Laptev served as editor in chief at Izvestiyaand later as speaker of the Supreme... MORE