It would have been the end for any ordinary city mayor: a friend suspected of a billion-dollar contraband scheme, your wife accused of using her city connections to build a massive fortune, and your 17 years in power condemned by a prominent opposition leader in a 42-page report on corruption

The independent Yedinstvo (Unity) trade union at Russia's AvtoVAZ automaker has announced it will hold mass protests to challenge the company's decision to lay off thousands of workers

The court disbands the organisation, seizes its assets and bands all of its activities in the cities of Taganrog, Neklinov and Matveevo-Kurgan

Moscow is trying to deprive the international community of any leverage against Tehran

With tensions again on the rise between Moscow and Tbilisi, Russia has inked defense pacts with breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and also threatened to seize Georgian ships in the Black Sea.

Eleven insurgents have been killed during four separate counterterrorist operations in Daghestan recently

Almost the entire National Assembly are allies of President Chavez because the opposition did not participate in the last legislative elections in protest against arbitrary rules set in place to undermine them

Western doubts increase but Russia has indicated it will torpedo a Western push for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program

On his latest trip, Chavez pledged to make Venezuela what appears to be the third country -- after Russia and Nicaragua -- to recognize the Georgian territories

A counterterrorist regime has been imposed in two villages in the Nazran region of the volatile Russian republic of Ingushetia