The head of the Russian Interior Ministry's Prison Department, Lt. Gen. Yury Kalinin, has been dismissed as part of the ministry's "Clean Hands" campaign. He is suspected of taking kickbacks in return for contracts to supply prisons.(Profil, June 15) Russian Drug Trade Data.

Aleksandr Sergeev, the head of the narcotics department at the Interior Ministry, estimates the narcotics trade in Russia to be worth $2 billion a year. Half of the drugs are imported and half produced inside Russia. The number of drug arrests rose from 10,000 in... MORE

A U.S. pentagon official said in Moscow yesterday that the U.S. is prepared to help Russia with the reform of its troubled armed forces. U.S. deputy secretary of defense John White, on the last leg of a European tour, said that the U.S. has already... MORE

Police yesterday found a large amount of pure heroin in a Tajik embassy car in Almaty. The Tajik driver was caught in the act of trying to sell part of the consignment, the office of Kazakstan's Prosecutor General announced. (Russian agencies, June 26) Moscow often... MORE

The Chechen government announced yesterday that it was canceling a customs agreement with Russia because it had taken Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin too long to sign it. The document was signed by Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and the heads of Russian and Chechen customs... MORE

A delegation representing the United Tajik Opposition [UTO] flew from Tehran to Moscow yesterday to take part in the signing ceremony for the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Harmony in Tajikistan. Members of official Dushanbe's delegation are already in Moscow, and... MORE

On a three-day visit to Israel, Moldovan president Petru Lucinschi and a government and business delegation conferred with Israeli president Ezer Weizman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli ministers and corporate executives in the agricultural and electronics sectors, and representatives of the large Bessarabian community, which... MORE

Parliament vice-chairman Ara Sahakian told a Yerevan news conference yesterday that Armenia should consider joining the Russia-Belarus Union "in order to ensure its own security." Sahakian accused the U.S. of pursuing an "anti-Armenian political course, pressuring Armenia to abandon Karabakh and condoning Turkey's hostile policy... MORE

The defense ministers of Lithuania and Poland, Ceslovas Stankevicius and Stanislaw Dobrzanski, signed in Vilnius yesterday an agreement on the creation of a joint battalion, LITPOLBAT. Destined for international peacekeeping operations, the battalion will be stationed at the Alytus base on the Lithuanian side of... MORE

Prime minister Andris Skele yesterday dismissed the ministers of health and of culture, Juris Vinkelis and Richards Piks, whom financial auditors last week had pronounced to be in violation of anti-corruption legislation. The former stands accused of tax evasion, and the latter of conflict of... MORE