- Russia had agreed to give Italy access to mineral deposits in exchange for access to Italian energy companies
- The Iranian nuclear problem could be returned to the competence of the International Atomic Energy Agency
- Russia and Italy had agreed to establish a mechanism for consultations over the Iranian nuclear problem
- Russia and Italy held common positions on the Middle East peace process
* At a session of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Putin:
- ordered the government to clarify a list of military technologies and to make new provisions in the state budget for military purposes
- said he was concerned over Russia's weak role in world high-tech production, and ordered the government to launch a program to develop the sector
* Oil company TNK-BP said it would sell Volga-region oil producer Udmurtneft to Chinese company Sinopec and state-run oil company Rosneft said it would buy a 51% stake from Sinopec
* Presidential aide Igor Shuvalov said in the run-up to July's G8 summit:
- Complications over supplies of Russian natural gas to Ukraine in January could recur
- Russia is neither preparing nor expecting any surprises when the leaders of the world's most industrialized nations meet in St. Petersburg
- Russia's internal political situation means foreign companies cannot enjoy unlimited access to strategic mineral deposits yet
- Russia is not going to ratify the Energy Charter soon
* A senior Gazprom official said the energy giant would hold talks with Ukrainian authorities next week on Ukraine's preparations for the upcoming winter
* A senior executive of Russia's largest independent crude producer, LUKoil, said that domestic prices for natural gas could triple in the next few years to $100 per 1,000 cubic meters
* Leonid Slutsky, first deputy head of the lower house of parliament's international affairs committee, said Russian diplomats abducted early June in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, were still alive
* Russia's Armed Forces will receive up to 250 types of advanced weaponry in 2006, said General Alexei Moskovsky, a deputy defense minister
* Russia's Supreme Court overturned a 13-year sentence against a man convicted of attempted murder in a knife attack on a Moscow synagogue and sent the case for a retrial
* The Finance Ministry said Russia's sovereign foreign debt fell by $1.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, to $75.2 billion
* The speaker of the upper house of Russia's parliament said there could be no talks with terrorists who seized Russian diplomats in Iraq on June 3 and no concessions would be made
* A deputy defense minister said Russia would conduct scheduled flight tests of the Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile in the next two months
* Russian energy giant Gazprom said its earnings from natural gas supplies to Europe this year would total $37 billion
* Naftogaz, Ukraine's national oil and gas company, should reduce its $370 million debt from excess natural gas consumption to $100 million by July 1, the deputy chairman of Russian energy giant Gazprom's managing committee said
* Anatoly Chubais, the head of Russia's electricity monopoly Unified Energy System, said he would welcome foreign investment in two or three power plants of the 20 generating companies that resulted from energy-sector reform.
