- Parliament voted to advise the president to replace Russian peacekeepers in two breakaway regions with international forces
- The parliament speaker said the South Caucasus state was prepared to sign treaties guaranteeing that there will be no resumption of fighting with its breakaway provinces
- President Mikheil Saakashvili said the problem of Russian peacekeepers could be resolved at an upcoming meeting with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said 1,230 citizens of Russia and other CIS countries would be evacuated from Lebanon within the next two days
* Federal Security Service Head Nikolai Patrushev said:
- Russia's security forces foiled terrorist plans targeting the weekend's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg
- Russia is continuing operations to hunt down the killers of five diplomats in Iraq
* Russia's Foreign Ministry said:
- The Georgian parliament's resolution on the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from its conflict zones is an irresponsible move
- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov will leave Wednesday for the Middle East to try to defuse the escalating Israeli-Lebanese conflict
- Most Russians will leave Lebanon, which Israel has been bombing since last week, on July 19
- A ban on certain Russians entering Ukraine is an unfriendly act
* A British court rejected a request from Yukos to block Rosneft's IPO on the London Stock Exchange
* Natural gas production in Russia in January-June grew 2.3% year on year to 333 billion cubic meters, the Federal Service for State Statistics said
* Mikhail Pogosyan, head of state-owned Sukhoi aircraft manufacturing holding, said he hoped the talks on the possible sales of Su aircraft to Venezuela would yield positive results
* In Ukraine:
- Ukraine's protracted political crisis took another step onto the streets as supporters of two political parties tried to seal off approaches to parliament in a protest against the formation of an "anti-crisis" coalition in the country
- Opposition blocs in Ukraine's parliament could form a shadow government, a member of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party said
- Ukraine's new "anti-crisis" parliamentary coalition nominated the Party of Region's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, for the post of prime minister
- The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, now the country's main opposition force, proposed raising the election threshold for parties seeking seats in parliament to 7%, from the 3%
