Three people were killed and three others injured in the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala, on May 28, when a bomb turned a jeep belonging to Dagestan's deputy prime minister, Said Amirov, into a heap of twisted metal. Amirov, who was in another car, was unhurt.... MORE

A U.S. Coast Guard ship yesterday joined a Russian Border Guard vessel for a two-day naval exercise aimed at training for joint rescue missions at sea. The exercise is taking place on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East. A similar exercise was held earlier... MORE

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Valery Nesterushkin said yesterday that Russia sees no reason to give Georgia some of the ships from the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet. The Georgians claim they are entitled to the warships once based in the Georgian port of Poti. Ukraine... MORE

In a radio address delivered earlier today to the Russian people, Russian president Boris Yeltsin defended his decision to sign the Russia-NATO Founding Act in Paris on May 27. Not surprisingly, Yeltsin's remarks were anything but an endorsement of NATO's enlargement plans. The Russian president... MORE

German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel has voiced the hope that Russia will take action to remove the nuclear warheads from all of its missiles targeting NATO countries, a German newspaper reported yesterday. Kinkel was referring to a statement made by Boris Yeltsin during the May... MORE

Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has been elected to membership of the Russian Academy of Sciences -- the most prestigious academic institution in Russia. (Itar-Tass, May 28) Red Cross to Return to Chechnya.

The International Committee of the Red Cross intends to resume its humanitarian activity in Chechnya, an envoy announced this week. The envoy, Francois Bugnon, was in Djohar-gala for talks with Chechen government officials. The Red Cross pulled its staff out of Chechnya in December, 1996,... MORE

A Russian soldier serving at a military base in the Chita region opened fire on his comrades in the early morning hours today, killing the company commander and four other soldiers. Private Yevgeny Gorbunov then fled with a sub-machine gun and is still at large.... MORE

The commander of the Siberian Military District, Col. Gen. Viktor Kopylov, announced yesterday that he had submitted his resignation for health reasons. He has been in command of the district since 1991. Kopylov said that the minister of defense had accepted his resignation, but it... MORE

On an official visit to Georgia, Ukrainian defense minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk conferred with President Eduard Shevardnadze and signed with Defense Minister Vardiko Nadibaidze a package of six documents on bilateral military cooperation. The agreements envisage, inter alia: Ukrainian maintenance of Georgian military equipment; training of... MORE