- Russia has to deny foreign investors access to its national defense sector and major deposits, but welcomes foreign investment in all other spheres
- A total of 15 car producers worldwide, including German ones, have decided to launch production lines in Russia
- Russia will never let down its foreign partners who rely on its energy resources
* Natural gas trader Rosukrenergo, 50% owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom, denied media allegations of a cutoff in deliveries to Poland, citing a brief technical problem
* A powerful blast hit the Chechen capital Wednesday evening, the Interior Ministry of the troubled Russian republic in the North Caucasus said
* Russian energy giant Gazprom said it has delivered its first consignment of liquefied natural gas to South Korea
* Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boiko said the country will need three years to transition to European natural gas prices
* Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said the natural gas price for Ukraine's population will be 339 hryvnias (about $68) per 1,000 cubic meters
* The last Russian emergencies ministry plane to leave Georgia took off for Moscow with 126 Russians on board, an official with the Russian Embassy in Georgia said as diplomatic tensions continue
* Bavaria's Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber spoke in favor of creating a free-trade zone with Russia
* The parliament of Transdnestr, a self-proclaimed republic in Moldova, has asked Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly to acknowledge it as a sovereign independent state
* The Russian soccer team took its first victory at the 2008 Euro Cup qualifiers after defeating Estonia 2-0
* Russia's lower chamber of parliament passed the draft 2007 budget on a second reading
* Iran is determined to develop full nuclear fuel cycle technology, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said
* The U.S. has not yet officially proposed to Poland that American missile defense elements be deployed on the European country's territory, Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said
* Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin prime minister of Chechnya, said he had no grounds to persecute journalist Anna Politkovskaya, killed last week in Moscow
* Russian asset management company Renova and German engineering and electronics giant Siemens said in a joint news release they have signed a 450 million euro agreement to cooperate on infrastructure projects in Russia
* Protesters who gathered in the capital of Kyrgyzstan to support freedom of speech in the country stopped their rally after talks with the Kyrgyz Prime Minister Felix Kulov
* The director of a Moscow branch of Russia's state-owned foreign trade bank Vneshtorgbank was shot dead in Moscow in a suspected contract killing
* Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the development of civil aviation should be the country's fifth national priority project
* The death toll in the collapse of an apartment building Monday in the northwest Russian city of Vyborg, near St. Petersburg, has risen to seven
* Police in northwest Russia have detained six members of an ultranationalist group, the Russian National Unity, on suspicion of involvement in desecrating Jewish and Tatar cemeteries earlier this month, the Interior Ministry said
* The Presidium of Russia's Supreme Court upheld a defense appeal in a case involving doctors of a Moscow clinic accused of performing illegal transplant operations
