* Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had agreed to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, as part of the bilateral Russian-Ukrainian Commission
* The issue of the price of natural gas supplied from Russia to Ukraine has been resolved, the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Oleksandr Moroz, said
* Russia has submitted a new draft resolution on the situation in Georgia, taking into account German proposals, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said
* United Nations military observers will resume patrols in the upper part of the Kodori Gorge in the breakaway republic of Abkhazia in Georgia for the first time since the summer of 2003, a Georgian official said
* Georgia wants to exclude international mediation in resolving the conflict with its breakaway region of South Ossetia, with Georgia's state minister for conflict resolution saying that talks on the issue should be held in a bilateral format
* Russia and Kazakhstan have established their first joint venture to enrich uranium in the Siberian city of Angarsk, about 5,000 km (3,100 miles) east of Moscow, Russia's nuclear power agency said
* Ukraine's pro-presidential parliamentary bloc Our Ukraine said it intends to form a shadow government
* Azerbaijan may stop imports of Russian natural gas in 2007 and seek alternatives if prices offered at upcoming talks are unacceptably high, the country's energy minister said
* Azerbaijan is ready to allow Iranian gas to be transited across its territory to Georgia, if the latter reaches a natural gas export agreement with Iran, the country's industry and energy minister said
* Admiralty Shipyards, a St. Petersburg-based company, said it would start the construction of a fourth-generation diesel submarine in November
* Alu Alkhanov, the president of Chechnya, said 1,900 civilians and 400 military servicemen went missing during two military campaigns in the troubled South Russian republic
* Evraz Group, Russia's top steel producer, is seeking to buy assets outside the country, the company's chief financial officer said
* New hearings in a long-running case over the alleged murders of six civilians by Russian army officers four years ago in Chechnya were postponed until October 24, after a defense lawyer failed to attend due to illness
* A Russian court martial sentenced a former captain to 12 years in prison for brutally beating a soldier, who subsequently died of his injuries
