At the time, Russia’s lobbying to lift oil sanctions against Iraq made a certain kind of sense. Saddam Hussein’s regime owed Russia billions and Moscow was hoping to get it back. Now it turns out there was much more to Russia’s agitating on behalf of Iraq in the United Nations. Saddam was bribing key Russian officials with cut-rate oil allocations.

NEW YORK - Oil prices shot up more than $5 a barrel Thursday, rising to the highest level in over two weeks as escalating tensions with Russia stoked fears of supply disruptions to the West.

Russia still is not much of a democracy, but that it’s even close is largely due to the energetic, if often erratic, efforts of its former president, Boris Yeltsin, who died this week at age 76.

Rookie forward Enver Lisin, who was reassigned to San Antonio of the AHL on Monday, decided Wednesday to return to his native Russia to play rather than report to the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate.

September 7, 2004

American hearts surely go out to Russians, who have once again suffered a terrorist attack, this last one in a school with more than 350 hostages dead, many of them children.

Even if Sunday's Russian presidential election were fair, Vladimir Putin would win. He is incontestably popular, with approval ratings above 70 percent for the four years of his first term.

MOSCOW - Russia formally recognized the breakaway Georgian territories at the heart of its war with Georgia on Tuesday, heightening tensions with the West as the United States dispatched a military ship bearing aid to a port city still patrolled by Russian troops.

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday accused Russia of "bullying and intimidation" in its harsh military treatment of Georgia, saying the people in the former Soviet republic have chosen freedom and "we will not cast them aside."

GORI, Georgia - Russia's foreign minister declared Thursday that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity, and officials said Russia targeted military infrastructure and equipment - including radars and patrol boats at a Black Sea naval base and oil hub.

MOSCOW - Early results showed Vladimir Putin's party winning more than 60 percent of the vote Sunday in a parliamentary election that could pave the way for him to remain the country's leader even when he steps down as president.

VILNIUS, Lithuania - Vice President Dick Cheney, in remarks that caused a stir in neighboring Russia, accused President Vladimir Putin Thursday of restricting the rights of citizens and said that "no legitimate interest is served" by turning energy resources into implements of blackmail.

MOSCOW - Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service on Saturday denied that Moscow provided information on U.S. troop movements and plans to Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

NALCHIK, Russia - Militants attacked police and government buildings in Russia's volatile Caucasus region Thursday, taking hostages and turning a provincial capital into a war zone wracked by gunfire and explosions that left at least 85 people dead, mostly insurgents.

MOSCOW - Preliminary tests on fowl from a region south of Moscow where hundreds of birds died suddenly detected a deadly strain of bird flu, Russia said Wednesday, bolstering signs that the dreaded virus might be spreading across Siberia to the Mediterranean.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - President Bush scolded Russia for backsliding on democracy Monday and urged Mideast allies to take difficult steps for peace, appealing for Europe's help in both troubled areas to "set history on a hopeful course."