Russian oil companies last week concluded a series of deals with Baghdad to buy more than 30 million barrels of Iraqi oil under the UN's so-called "food for oil" arrangement, a Russian oil official said on August 14. Zarubezhneft, LUKoil, Rosneft, and Alfa-Eko led the... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry last week laid the blame for the failure of UN sponsored talks on the reunification of Cyprus squarely on the shoulders of the Turkish Cypriots. Various Russian diplomats, in Moscow and at the UN talks in Glion, Switzerland, accused the Turkish Cypriot... MORE

During the last week seven members of the Russian Ground Forces committed suicide, according to a Defense Ministry report. Another 5 service personnel were murdered and 8 died in accidents. (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 19) Last week, the Russian "Mother's Rights" group announced to the press... MORE

Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) have implemented President Boris Yeltsin's May pledge no longer to aim Russian nuclear missiles at NATO targets, the SRF press center announced yesterday. Some of the missiles once aimed at NATO have been "detargeted" while the warheads were removed from... MORE

There is no let-up in the row that has been raging for the past month within the Russian government. Yesterday, President Boris Yeltsin entered the fray, criticizing media tycoon Igor Malashenko and Security Council deputy secretary Boris Berezovsky for "insulting" the Chechen government. (See Monitor,... MORE

Berezovsky reacted caustically to Yeltsin's reprimand yesterday, telling a press conference that it was important to tell the truth about the Caucasus and that burying one's head in untruths would only create further troubles. Berezovsky aimed his criticism at the Russian government's "young reformers," First... MORE

Russia's relations with Chechnya topped the agenda yesterday when President Yeltsin chaired a meeting of the Russian Security Council devoted to the North Caucasus. Also on the agenda was the Ingush-Ossetian conflict, followed by interethnic tensions in Dagestan and the need, in general, for Russia... MORE

The Finance Ministry has provided Russia's Defense Ministry with the full 5.9 trillion rubles needed to cover the back pay owed to the members of the armed forces, but it remains to be seen how soon and how much will trickle down to the individual... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's Security Council spokesman, Vasyl Baranau, yesterday compared Russia's state-controlled ORT TV to the "cold-war Radio Liberty." Just as RL "aimed to destroy the USSR," ORT serves to "discredit the Russia-Belarus Union" and to "draw a wedge between the initiators of integration, Lukashenka... MORE

State Minister (equivalent of prime minister) Niko Lekishvili and a delegation of Georgian cabinet ministers conferred yesterday in Abkhazia's capital, Sukhumi, with Vladislav Ardzinba and other Abkhaz leaders. The meeting was confined to economic questions, as was agreed upon at last week's unprecedented talks in... MORE