* Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov called Russian energy giant Gazprom's price of $230 per 1,000 cu m of natural gas unacceptable
* Gazexport, the export arm of Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom, said Russia could participate in the privatization of Georgia's gas trunk pipeline
* The Russian Foreign Ministry's Ambassador-at-Large Valery Kenyaikin said Moscow regretted Georgia's refusal to establish a task force with the self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia to settle the ongoing conflict between the two sides
* CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha said the Collective Security Treaty Organization did not see any reasons to establish additional military bases in Central Asia
* President Vladimir Putin signed a bill that lays out the groundwork for parliamentary investigations into serious or mass violations of human rights and freedoms and into the circumstances and disaster aftermath
* The parliamentary commission investigating the 2004 Beslan school siege said tanks had shelled the school only after the hostages had been evacuated and that the attack had been masterminded by the notorious terrorists Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov
* The Russian Foreign Ministry said Ukraine's reference to the memorandum on security guarantees within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in connection with the gas dispute were ungrounded
* Russian Mission Control said the first satellite of new European space navigation system Galileo, launched aboard a Russian Soyuz carrier rocket Wednesday, had been put into orbit
* Uzbekistan's Supreme Court sentenced 11 local Interior Ministry officers to 1.5-11 years in prison in connection with the Andijan riots
