* With the vote-count nearly complete in the elections to Ukraine's 450-seat parliament, the pro-Russian Party of Regions is still in the lead with 32.12% of the vote
* Russia rejected reports alleging it had passed intelligence to Iraq ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003
* A Swedish court ruled that 30-year-old Andrei Zamyatnin, a Russian national suspected of espionage, should be remanded in custody
* A prominent lawmaker said that a bill aiming to regulate foreign companies' access to strategic Russian assets would be submitted to parliament for consideration next week
* A senior member of the lower house of Russia's parliament said more than 50 Russian companies were intending to hold an initial public offering of their shares on the domestic market
* Russia's foreign minister joined his counterparts from Germany, the United States, France, Britain and China in Berlin for a meeting to discuss ways to break the ongoing impasse around Iran's controversial nuclear program
* Energy giant Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said the company was ready to listen to offers from Baltic-region states on extending one of Russia's most ambitious natural-gas projects
* Vnesheconombank, the state-controlled bank that handles Russia's foreign debt, said Russia had paid off more than $938 million of the debt
* Russia's leading air carrier, Aeroflot, said its board of directors had approved a deal to purchase 30 Russian Regional Jets and seven Airbus A-321 medium-range passenger planes in a bid to gain a competitive edge on domestic and international markets
