The illogicality of Zyuganov's position has likely convinced the Yeltsin leadership that the Communist-dominated Duma will eventually accept the government's budget, albeit with some changes. Zyuganov repeated his call yesterday for the establishment of a roundtable of representatives of government, parliament, trade unions, and political... MORE

The latest round of Russian-Chechen talks has begun in Dagomys. The Russian delegation is headed by Security Council secretary Ivan Rybkin, the Chechen delegation by First Deputy Prime Minister Movladi Udugov. (NTV, RTR, October 9) The meeting is taking place despite difficult circumstances. After the... MORE

Russian deputy prime minister and interior minister Anatoly Kulikov thinks that the reason for the complex crime situation in Dagestan is the fact that it borders Chechnya. Addressing a conference on the fight against crime in the region, held yesterday in Makhachkala, Kulikov said that... MORE

A prominent U.S. banker, Boris Jordan, returned to Moscow yesterday on a one-week single-entry visa. At the beginning of the month, a Russian passport official had canceled his multi-entry visa in what First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov says was an attempt by rival Russian... MORE

Russian Foreign Ministry press spokesman Grigory Tarasov yesterday derided recent U.S. reports of illegal arms dealings between Russian crime groups and Colombian drug dealers as figments of the American imagination. Tarasov also suggested that the reports were part of a cynical effort to keep Russian... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin on October 6 signed the decree for Russia's autumn conscription period -- which runs from August through December. He set an induction goal of 188,400 conscripts, the lowest in many years. Of this total, 113,000 will serve in the armed forces proper.... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka yesterday said he wanted to establish a "personal, man-to-man friendship" with Russian president Boris Yeltsin, whom he "deeply respects as an experienced leader and president of a fraternal country." Lukashenka blamed the recent "estrangement between the two presidents" on the intrigues of... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry yesterday turned down the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's October 7 proposal for talks aimed at resolving an inter-church dispute that has degenerated into violence. On September 29, Russian law-enforcement agencies seized a large compound in Noginsk, Moscow region, from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv... MORE

Tbilisi yesterday took delivery of most of the archive of the government of the Georgian Democratic Republic, an independent country from 1918 to 1921, which was suppressed by Soviet Russia and incorporated the following year into the USSR. Georgia's Social-Democrat leaders took the archive into... MORE

The office of Azerbaijani president Haidar Aliev on October 9 released a statement citing instructions that have just been conveyed to government-owned mass media on Aliev's behalf. Editors-in-chief are being put on guard to avoid both excessive "propaganda" of the country's performance and "flattering" Aliev.... MORE