#2
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu)
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and
Policy
at Boston University
HEADLINES,
- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has asserted that it is too early to talk about a complete victory against the Taliban. He also repeated that Russia does not plan on participating in any military actions in Afghanistan despite the close cooperation with the United States.
- A new submarine -- third-generation nuclear submarine Gepard -- has been completed in Severodvinsk. It will join the ranks of Russia's Northern Fleet tomorrow. President Putin will attend the launch.
- Today has been set aside as the Day of the Nuclear Fleet -- the first celebrations took place in Murmansk. This date was chosen to commemorate the anniversary of the day the nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin was put out to sea in 1949.
- Russian astronauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tiunin conducted a unique operation in open space -- they removed a foreign object from the docking mechanism of the Zvezda module at the International Space Station.
- A delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), headed Lord Frank Judd, has arrived in Grozny to meet with Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen administration, Stanislav Ilyasov, the chairman of the government, and Vladimir Moltenskii, the commander of the joint forces of the Northern Caucasus. Lord Judd praised the contacts of Putin's representatives with Aslan Maskhadov and expressed his opinion that the Chechen conflict can be settled only in a peaceful manner. On Tuesday, Lord Judd will visit refugee camps in the Ingush settlement of Karabulak and the Chechen settlement of Znameskoye.
- The Foreign Ministers Council of the Organization on Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is meeting in Bucharest.
- After his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Zubarov, the head of the Pension Fund, announced that, as of 1 January 2002, over 10 million senior citizens will receive a noticeable addition to their pensions.
- President Putin chaired a cabinet meeting in the Kremlin. Aid and support for the almost 10 million handicapped persons living in the Russian Federation was discussed.
- President Putin also met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi today. The two leaders discussed bilateral relations and signed a declaration of friendly relations and partnership.
- Ten bodies have been found so far at the site of the Il-76 crash in the Khabarovsk region. Search and recover efforts have been postponed until tomorrow.
- An artillery vehicle has fallen into a river in the Altai region.. The number of victims has not yet been established.
- Bandits have attacked an archeological operation at an ancient burial site in the Crimea.
- Thirty people searching for scrap metal at a city dump on the outskirts of Bishkek were buried when the garbage collapsed. Four bodies have been recovered. Rescuers fear that the rest of the victims have also died under the 8-meter layer of trash.
- A play about Marlene Dietrich is hitting the stage of Moscow's Estrada theater.
- The Narofominsk city court is reviewing the case of Tamara Rokhlin, accused of murdering her husband, General Lev Rokhlin.
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