* Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed a decree to increase customs duties on exports of petroleum products outside the member countries of the CIS Customs Union
* A senior official in Washington rejected claims that non-governmental organizations in Russia worked for the United States
* Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said foreign investment in Russia's economy was expected to double by 2008 to reach $25 billion
* Sergei Storchak, a deputy finance minister, said Russia would repay $12 billion of debt to the Paris Club of Creditor Nations ahead of schedule in August
* Russia's nuclear power agency, and a nuclear materials exporter, plan to submit proposals on the establishment of an international uranium enrichment center in Russia to the government in June
* The Russian Prosecutor General's office has charged Vasily Aleksanyan, executive vice president of embattled oil company Yukos, following his arrest early in the day
* Energy giant Gazprom said it would supply natural gas to Armenia at $110 per 1,000 cu m until 2009 under an agreement signed with the country's authorities
* Alexei Ulyukayev, Russian Central Bank first deputy chairman, said inflation in April would be 0.6-0.7%
* The press service for the Nenets Autonomous Area in Russia's far north said state-owned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft had completed prospecting work for a new pipeline to link oil-rich parts of Siberia to northwestern Russia
* Pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine said it had signed a protocol on forming a parliamentary coalition with the bloc of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the Socialist party
* Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of Ukraine's pro-Russian Party of Regions and former prime minister warned against the formation of an "orange" coalition in the country's new parliament, saying that it could result in a catastrophe
