All three parties to the dispute --both houses of parliament and the Yeltsin administration -- continued their discussions on June 7. The Federation Council may concede a 50-50 split in seats elected by party list and by single-member constituency, but only if the Duma agrees... MORE

In a move that surprised no one, the Russian justice ministry said that the efforts by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's "Russia is Our Home" bloc to organize party sections in various workplaces do not violate a 1992 law prohibiting such activities, Moscow radio reported June... MORE

Russian oil and gas companies announced June 7 that they will back prime minister and former gas industry chief Viktor Chernomyrdin's electoral bloc but only if the government pursues what the producers called "a policy of rational protectionism," Moscow radio reported. But the producers themselves... MORE

Responding to Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev's suggestion this week that Moscow should press for the easing of the UN-imposed embargo on Iraq, Duma foreign relations committee chairman Vladimir Lukin said that such a step could cost Russia billions of dollars in revenue, Moscow radio reported... MORE

Russian officials, from Yeltsin on down, have pressed for the expansion of the G-7 meetings to be called the G-8, but they will be disappointed at Halifax. Officials preparing that meeting said they would call the sessions the P-8 in recognition of the fact that... MORE

A majority of Duma budget committee members present voted against recommending the confirmation of Tatyana Paramonova as chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, Segodnya reported June 7. Paramonova may still be confirmed; Russian bankers who oppose her tight money policies probably have more influence... MORE

A poll of Russian enterprise directors shows that Russian businessmen are slightly less pessimistic than they have been in the past, Finansovye izvestiya reported June 6. Some 68 percent of them said that the situation in the country's economy was bad, down from over 80... MORE

Duma economics committee chairman Sergei Glaziyev said that experts have concluded that 10 percent of all Russians lack the food they need and that 30 percent live in poverty, Moscow radio reported June 7. Glaziyev said that Russian government claims of economic stabilization were simply... MORE

Russia now ranks third in the world in the rate of suicides among its population, Russian demographers told Vechernyaya Moskva June 6. In 1990, there were 39,150 suicides in the Russian Federation; in 1993, the last year for which data are available, the number had... MORE

By June 8, all three men who hijacked a helicopter in the Russian Far East June 7 were in custody, Interfax said. The three had demanded a $600,000 ransom for the plane and unobstructed passage out of the country. The pilot gave himself up on... MORE