UKRAINE MAY GET COMPENSATION FOR TACTICAL NUCLEAR WARHEADS.

Meeting in Moscow after the CIS summit, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma agreed in principle that Ukraine would receive $ 450 million in compensation for nuclear warheads of ex-USSR tactical nuclear missiles shipped by Ukraine to Russia in 1992. The sum is to be deducted from Ukraine’s energy debt to Russia, estimated at some $4 billion. But no document has been signed, and some Ukrainian officials understood their Russian counterparts as linking this issue to renunciation of the Ukrainian fleet’s bases in Sevastopol. (Interfax-Ukraine, Itar-Tass, May 18 and 19)

Russian Military Plans for Georgia Worry Turkey.