Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Valery Nesterushkin yesterday attacked "anti-Russian forces" in Tbilisi who accuse Moscow of "not lifting a finger to implement the March 28 CIS decision" on repatriating Georgian refugees to Abkhazia. The spokesman was quoting verbatim President Eduard Shevardnadze's May 5 address. Those... MORE

The military detachment of field commander Rahmon Sanginov, which operates only 10 kilometers east of Dushanbe, yesterday took hostage Col. Muzafar Aminov, a member of President Imomali Rahmonov's Security Council. Aminov had gone to a Sanginov-controlled village in order to negotiate the release of two... MORE

The Russian Communist Party is planning to picket the embassies of NATO countries today, eve of the Victory Day holiday. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said yesterday that the party remains totally opposed to NATO expansion and that Russia should respond by uniting with Belarus and... MORE

King Juan Carlos of Spain completed a three-day visit to Russia yesterday that included a meeting with President Boris Yeltsin and talks with Russian and Spanish business leaders. European security issues and bilateral trade were among the issues discussed during the king's visit. A Russian... MORE

Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yeltsin's former bodyguard who was sacked last summer as head of the Presidential Security Service, has filed a claim accusing the Russian president of unlawfully dismissing him from his post. (RIA news agency, May 6) In the meantime, Korzhakov has been elected... MORE

Volgograd oblast's chief law officer, Vyacheslav Shestopalov, has been excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church after he ordered a financial audit of churches in the region. Shestopalov became suspicious when he learned that people arrested for drunken driving had been urged by traffic police to... MORE

. Petr Karpov, the deputy head of the State Bankruptcy Administration (FUDN), was arrested April 28 on suspicion of taking a bribe of 5 million rubles ($800,000) from a Saratov factory director seeking to remove his firm from the list of tax debtors threatened with... MORE

Gen. Petr Deinekin, commander in chief of Russia's Air Force, urged on May 4 that the country's armed forces be streamlined from five to three service branches by consolidating the Air Defense Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, and Military Space Forces into one branch under the... MORE

Russian and Belarusan Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Aleksandr Lukashenko will meet in Moscow on May 23 to sign the union charter between their two countries, Yeltsin's press secretary Sergei Yastrzhembsky announced yesterday. Yastrzhembsky said Yeltsin has given instructions that an updated draft of the charter... MORE

Moscow and NATO appeared to inch still closer toward the signing of a proposed political agreement yesterday as Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov announced that he would meet with NATO secretary general Javier Solana on May 13 and another high ranking Russian diplomat said that... MORE