Some 500 people demonstrated in downtown Vladivostok on September 29 to demand the reinstatement of the mayor of the city, Viktor Cherepkov. Cherepkov, who has long been at loggerheads with regional governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko, was suspended from his post by the Primorsky krai Duma while... MORE

Russian first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov has pledged to build an alternative to the oil pipeline carrying Caspian oil across Chechnya to Russia's Black Sea port at Novorossiisk. But the general director of Dagestan's Dagneft corporation, Hadji Makhachev, argues that Nemtsov's proposal to build... MORE

The Kremlin's chief spokesman announced yesterday that Russian president Boris Yeltsin is hopeful that his upcoming meeting with Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto will be "fruitful" and -- of perhaps greater practical importance -- that he is prepared to discuss any and all issues of... MORE

The Kremlin's chief spokesman and foreign policy coordinator, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, announced yesterday that Lithuanian president Algirdas Brazauskas will pay an official visit to Russia on October 23-25 and will sign with Russian president Boris Yeltsin an agreement legalizing the existing border between the two countries.... MORE

Interviewed in the Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, an independent newspaper sympathetic to the Belarusan opposition, Russian first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov accused president Alyaksandr Lukashenka of feigning "integration" with Russia rather than actually promoting it. Specifically, Nemtsov faulted Lukashenka for obstructing bids by the Russian... MORE

Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma yesterday appointed Dmytro Tabachnik as a presidential adviser; his responsibilities are as yet unspecified. (Ukrainian agencies, September 30) Tabachnik headed the presidential administration from 1994 to December 1996. His immense influence and personal control of access to Kuchma ultimately made Tabachnik... MORE

The commander of Russia's Federal Border Service, Gen. Andrei Nikolaev, conferred in Almaty on September 28-29 with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev, defense minister Col. Gen. Muhtar Altynbaev, and border troops commander Toktasyn Buzubaev. The sides continued to disagree regarding the deployment of Cossack detachments as... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin announced yesterday that some 500 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium and 50 tons of plutonium would be removed from military nuclear programs as Russia dismantled some of its nuclear weapons. Yeltsin was addressing his remarks to the 41st general conference of... MORE

The leader of one of Russia's fringe religious groups says there has been a sharp increase in police harassment since President Boris Yeltsin signed a controversial bill on religion into law on September 26. Vadim Kuneev, leader of the Krishna Consciousness organization in Moscow, reported... MORE

A conference of Russian, British, and French demographers is meeting today in Moscow with the participation of Russian officials to consider the causes of the country's demographic crisis. Russia's population is falling by an average of 1,300 per day and now stands at 147.2 million.... MORE