* Igor Smirnov, leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Transdnestr in Moldova, asked Russia for help in averting a crisis in the region, providing humanitarian aid and boosting the peacekeeping mission
* Belarusian opposition groups plan to continue their protest against the results of Sunday's presidential elections through the night
* A number of senior diplomats from European Union countries arrived at the central square in Minsk, where demonstrators are protesting the results of Sunday's presidential election
* A senior Russian Foreign Ministry official criticized the OSCE for bias in assessing the presidential election in Belarus, highlighting the need to improve the process of observing polls
* Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Alexander Lukashenko on his reelection as president of Belarus
* Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia's new governmental defense committee would make it easier to exercise effective control over the country's military industry
* Merab Antadze, Georgia's deputy foreign minister, said his country had demanded the immediate release of Georgians detained in Belarus for protesting the results of the country's presidential elections
* The Emergency Situations Ministry said more than 5.5 million birds had been vaccinated against bird flu in southern Russia
* ConocoPhillips chairman John Malva said his company would invest up to $3 billion this year to increase its stake in Russia's largest independent oil company, LUKoil
* Chechnya's parliament asked the Kremlin to change the current profit distribution scheme from oil produced in the North Caucasus republic and said a controlling stake in oil company Grozneftegaz, a subsidiary of state-owned oil major Rosneft, should be made the property of the Chechen Republic
* Anatoly Ledovskikh, head of the Federal Agency for the Management of Mineral Resources, said the agency hoped to check the status of oil license agreements in Eastern Siberia in Q2 2006.
