At a meeting in Kyiv on September 28-29 under the motto "Russia and Ukraine on the Way to Strategic Partnership," senior officials and public figures of the two countries agreed to set up a Russian-Ukrainian Consultative Council. On the Russia side its founders include CIS... MORE

Ukrainian Defense and Security Council head Volodymyr Horbulin yesterday publicly criticized the country's Defense Ministry and the General Staff for "drift, inconsistency, and incoherence" in developing military cooperation with NATO. Horbulin noted a "growing discrepancy between Ukraine's political objectives in seeking close ties with NATO... MORE

Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov, a crew member of the shuttle Atlantis, yesterday became the first non-American to conduct a space walk from a U.S. ship. He joined astronaut Scott Parazynski outside the Russian space station Mir, where the two retrieved equipment from a scientific experiment... MORE

Japan is seriously considering a request for economic aid from the local administration of the cash-strapped southern Kuril Islands, Japanese Foreign Ministry sources indicated earlier today. The issue was discussed during an unprecedented visit this week to the disputed islands by Japanese deputy foreign minister... MORE

A top Russian diplomat and an official from the state arms trading company, Rosvooruzhenie, have categorically denied a recent Taipei newspaper report suggesting that Moscow is prepared to sell Su-37 jet fighters to Taiwan. The diplomat, who is director of the Foreign Ministry's First Asian... MORE

Lithuanian parliament chairman Vytautas Landsbergis yesterday rejected charges that he had worked for the KGB during the 1980s. The charges were aired yesterday by a parliamentary deputy citing alleged testimony by four former KGB agents whom he interviewed in his capacity as a member of... MORE

On the night of October 1, all 80 officials of Russia's representation in Chechnya were expelled from the republic on the personal orders of Chechen vice-president Vakha Arsanov. The crisis erupted after a Chechen delegation, headed by the vice-president, was denied permission to fly to... MORE

Some progress toward resolving the conflict appeared to have been made last night, when Maskhadov met for over two hours with Russian deputy prime minister Ramazan Abdulatipov at the residence of President Ruslan Aushev in neighboring Ingushetia. Abdulatipov said afterwards that the Russian president's plenipotentiary... MORE

Russian first deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais has taken the politically risky step of defending Alfred Kokh, former deputy premier and head of the State Privatization Committee who is presently under investigation in a bribery case. The two men are old colleagues and friends. President... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin yesterday joined with Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, in dismissing objections from Washington over a $2 billion gas deal between the Iran National Oil Company and an international group led by the French oil-and-gas company Total. Gazprom has a 30 percent stake... MORE