* Vladimir Putin told his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, that Russia was ready to cooperate closely with him and the country's new Cabinet
* With the vote-count nearly complete in Ukraine's parliamentary elections, the pro-Russian Party of Regions was leading with 31.94% of the vote
* An election bloc headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine, leveled accusations of electoral fraud at several regions in a rival party's territorial stronghold and said it would contest the results
* Political parties and blocs that failed to negotiate a 3%- barrier to take up seats in Ukraine's parliament after the recent elections demanded that the votes be recounted
* Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the Central Bank would have to keep tight control over the amount of money in the country's economy to keep inflation down if oil prices remained high
* Ukraine's Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov said his country's debt to Turkmenistan for natural gas supplies stood at $68 million, and that it would be paid off by supplies of industrial goods
* The leader of a pro-presidential party in Georgia described a high-profile businessman as a "wannabe mafia boss" in a move likely to trigger a standoff in relations between the Georgian government and the country's business community
* A spokesman for Tekhnopromexport, a Russian company building the largest power plant in Iraq, said 18 Iraqis abducted Monday in Baghdad were working for the company
* Russia's Supreme Court quashed a not guilty verdict in the case of a group of Moscow doctors accused of carrying out illegal transplants
* The board of directors of Russian energy giant Gazprom said it had approved proposals on the reorganization of the company's subsidiaries
