The Russian military leadership doubts the effectiveness of the military operation carried out by Georgia in the Pankisi Gorge. "Their entire operation is pure sham and imitation of actions to combat terrorism," First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky told reporters on Wednesday. "The results of this operation are zero.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze's statement that Tbilisi has no evidence that Ruslan Gelayev is a terrorist causes bewilderment in Moscow. This is stated in the statement of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Yakovenko, distributed by the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

To extinguish forest fires in the Moscow region, the Russian Emergencies Ministry is starting to use special aviation equipment, Gazeta.Ru reports. As the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia reported on Wednesday, to extinguish forest fires at 11.00 am, an Il-76 aircraft with 42 tons of water and a Mi-8 helicopter with 5 tons of water are scheduled to take off from the Ramenskoye airfield.

The reason for the death of 8 policemen in the city of Shali on Tuesday night could be a mortar attack. This is the main version, which is now considered by the investigation. This was reported to RIA Novosti on Tuesday evening by the head of the republican commission investigating the tragedy, the deputy head of the administration of the republic, Taus Dzhabrailov.

was sent from the Russian Senate to the Prosecutor General's Office A request on abuse of power by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Eduard Shevardnadze when signing the Soviet-American agreement on the delimitation of the Bering and Chukchi Seas . head of the Federation Council Committee on the Affairs of the North and Indigenous Peoples The author of the request, Alexander Nazarov, , answers questions from Graney.Ru.

On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush is going to discuss plans for Iraq with congressmen, according to Reuters. The meeting was scheduled at the initiative of the head of state. As White House press secretary Ari Fleischer explained, the meeting will touch upon issues of national security, the problem of Iraq and key points of the war on terror.

4.09. Two emergency airliners are circling in the sky over Russia In the sky over Surgut (Tyumen region), one of the three engines of the Tu-154 passenger plane, flying along the route Surgut - Moscow, failed. The accident occurred immediately after the plane took off from Surgut airport. The crew requested an emergency landing at the airport of departure and are currently circling over the city, burning fuel.

In accordance with the preliminary forecast, the amount of precipitation corresponding to the norm should fall in September in Moscow, said Alexei Lyakhov, director of the Hydrometeorological Bureau of Moscow and the Moscow Region. According to Interfax, Lyakhov explained that the average rainfall for September is 65 mm. "About the same we expect," he said.

The state of atmospheric air in Moscow has improved somewhat over the past day. Evgenia Semutnikova, Deputy Director of the State Environmental Protection Enterprise Mosekomonitoring, informed RIA Novosti about this. According to Mosecomonitoring, the concentration of carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide) and combustion products in the air has decreased compared to Tuesday, though so far only slightly.

The meeting of foreign ministers of the countries belonging to the League of Arab States began on Wednesday in the Egyptian capital. It is attended by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. The focus is on the situation in the Middle East in the light of the threats of the American military operation against Iraq. Opening the meeting, Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa said that the threat to Baghdad is a "critical challenge" to the entire region.

Pakistani secret services managed to detain four people suspected of having links with the terrorist network "Al-Qaeda" in the village of Jani Hale, five more al-Qaeda members were arrested in the neighboring village of Bannu. Both villages are located on the border with Afghanistan. According to Reuters, all the detainees are citizens of Pakistan.

The leadership of the Russian General Staff confirms their readiness for a joint investigation with Georgia into the fact of the bombings in the Pankisi Gorge. First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky, told reporters on Wednesday that a delegation of the Russian Defense Ministry would fly to Georgia on September 5 to jointly investigate the circumstances of the bombings with the Georgian side.

A representative of the Prosecutor General's Office of Georgia told the ITAR-TASS agency that if Chechen field commander Ruslan Gelayev is found "on the territory of Georgia, he will be detained, and then the country's Prosecutor General's Office will consider the issue of transferring him to Russia."

At the site of the Tu-154 and Boeing-757 disaster. Photo AP The author of the article, the dispatcher of the Pulkovo airport, is convinced that we have no right to forget about the disaster over the Lake Bodensky, since the causes of the tragedy have not yet been eliminated. Recall what happened in the sky over South Germany on July 2, when the Russian Tu-154 encountered Boeing DHL. The Swiss dispatcher was late with the team to reduce at least half a minute.

According to the latest data, the death toll as a result of the passage of Typhoon Rusa through South Korea has reached 122 people, RIA Novosti reports. Another 70 are missing. According to the National Committee for Natural Disasters, one of the districts with 16 thousand inhabitants is still cut off from the mainland by water and landslides, and the situation there remains unclear. The South Korean government has declared 4 cities affected by the typhoon.