The Belarusan KGB yesterday released transcripts of tapped telephone conversations of the Russian ORT TV's Minsk bureau staff. It also released video and written records of statements made by arrested members of the ORT team that had arrived last week in Belarus from Moscow. The... MORE

Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov's chief spokesman, Zafir Saidov, and his chief military adviser, Mizrob Kabirov, announced yesterday that government forces have virtually liquidated the military mutiny which began last month and which led to large-scale hostilities beginning on August 9. The officials stated that government... MORE

Russian and British police have seized 200 kilos of heroin in the southern Siberian city of Bratsk and arrested seven drug-smugglers in what is being described as the biggest heroin haul so far made in Siberia. British customs officials detected the drugs in a consignment... MORE

A Georgian paramilitary group yesterday took three Russian soldiers hostage on the Georgian side of the Georgian-Abkhaz military demarcation line. The group is offering to trade the hostages for the bodies of two Georgian fighters who were killed last week in a clash on the... MORE

Yelena Masyuk and her two-man film crew from Russia's NTV independent television channel spoke to reporters yesterday just after their release from three months' captivity in Chechnya. During most of that time, Masyuk said, they were kept in a cave in the forest. Masyuk's release... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov were upbeat following their meeting in Moscow yesterday. Maskhadov described Yeltsin warmly as "perhaps the only man who can decide things and make peace after 400 years of war." The two leaders agreed to set up... MORE

Yeltsin's statement of yesterday ignored the fact that the situations of Tatarstan and Chechnya are very different. Under the terms of its 1994 power-sharing treaty with the Russian Federation, Tatarstan won extensive autonomy, including some power over taxes and wide control of its own natural... MORE

The 3rd biannual Moscow International Air Show opens today at the Zhukovsky air field and many of the latest Russian military and civilian planes will be on display as Russian producers try to increase their share of the lucrative international aircraft market. Foreign planes will... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and officials of his administration and KGB announced yesterday that criminal charges of conspiracy to violate the border have been filed against the four-man team from Russia's state-controlled ORT TV network who were arrested on August 15 near the Belarus-Lithuania border. (See... MORE

Belarus's trade deficit ballooned to $919.2 million, or 16.1 percent of GDP, during the first half of 1997, according to data released by the Ministry for Foreign Economic Relations. (Russian agencies, August 11) In response, the government and the Belarusan National Bank are preparing to... MORE