Seeking to get talks started between Moscow and Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, Saint Petersburg mayor Anatoli Sobchak is currently hosting Dudayev's personal representative Khozhakhmed Yarikhanov, Interfax reported June 1. Human rights activist Antuan Arakelian, who has acted as mediator, said that Dudayev and his advisor... MORE

Rescue workers on Sakhalin have recovered 771 bodies so far, Interfax reported June 2, but the Russian news service said that officials still expect the death toll to reach 2,000. One measure of just how extensive the damage was: so many local officials were killed... MORE

Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev told Interfax June 1 that he had promptly approved Lt.Gen. Aleksandr Lebed's resignation. Terming his former protégé turned political rival "just an ordinary general," Grachev said he was certain Lebed would launch a political career. Lebed may be having second... MORE

Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigory Karasin told reporters June 1 that Moscow agreed with a UN report that said peacekeepers in Bosnia must either play a traditional peace-keeping role or be replaced by a multinational combat force. Karasin added that Moscow believed that the UN troops... MORE

Yeltsin has appointed TASS director Vitaly Ignatenko to be Russia's eighth deputy prime minister, Moscow television reported June 1. In this new role, Ignatenko, who is currently in charge of the government wire service Itar-Tass, which has been subordinate to the Russian president since 1993,... MORE

For the first time since the end of the Soviet Union, the Moscow weather service will not be allowed to release its estimates on the harvest, Interfax reported June 1. That information is proprietary, the Service claimed. Officers at the Federal Security Service said they... MORE

The Russian president has issued a decree subordinating the government's central auditing body to the Presidential Administration, Moskovsky komsomolets reported June 1. That will both enhance Yeltsin's ability to control the government and give him an important political tool to use against those in the... MORE

The recent rise of the Russian ruble against the American dollar has sparked an intense debate between those who believe it is a temporary phenomenon and those who believe it represents a fundamental change in Russia's economic situation, Izvestiya reported June 1. Deputy Prime Minister... MORE

Russian labor minister Gennady Melikyan, in an interview with Obshchaya gazeta (no. 22), warned that the current pattern in Russia where the rich get richer and the poor poorer could trigger a social explosion. To deal with that possibility, the Russian government must either suppress... MORE

The Russian government now looks to the Halifax G-7 meeting, rather than to the so-called Paris Club, for assistance in rescheduling its massive $130 billion foreign debt, Kommersant-Daily reported June 1. The paper quoted deputy premier Oleg Davydov as saying that in the Halifax meeting... MORE