MOSCOW — A total of 465 criminal proceedings were instituted in Russia in three months of this year against persons suspected of the illegal arms selling. Over 1,500 pieces of armaments, about 170,000 cartridges, almost 30 kilograms of explosives and 147 bombs were confiscated, deputy head of the Russian Interior Ministry department on organized crime Nikolai Morozov told correspondents on Tuesday. As a rule, the illegal arms selling is done by organized criminal... (GunPolicy.org)

BUCHAREST — A cigarette smuggling row, which has jolted Romania's security services, is hitting the country's efforts to inject life into international arms sales, a senior defence official said on Tuesday. "I am revolted by attempts to link legal arms trade with shady deals," General Dan Zaharia, head of the army's procurement department, told a news conference. "Criminals with high connections in society are trying to make believe that they are connected with a... (GunPolicy.org)

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria, struggling to revamp its out-sized and once flourishing defense industry, has embarked on a thorny path of selling it off, a senior government official said Wednesday. According to a restructuring plan, the government plans to reduce state participation, demilitarize production and privatize 22 major arms plants. "We expect Western firms which have shown interest earlier to restate their intentions officially and to take part in the... (GunPolicy.org)

ULAN BATOR — Mongolia imposes a total ban on the import of firearms and ammunition as of April 6, 1998. This decision was passed at a meeting of representatives of Mongolia's Foreign Ministry, the main police agency, the customs and a number of other agencies. The ban on the import of arms will be in operation until the passage of the law regulating the import of arms and ammunition. Participants in the meeting believe the present legal norms in the area "do not meet... (GunPolicy.org)

TBILISI — Five mourners were killed and eight wounded in former Soviet Georgia on Sunday when gunmen opened fire on a funeral procession for an opposition figure who took several United Nations personnel hostage a month ago. A Georgian police spokesman told Reuters in the capital Tbilisi they had no indication of the identity of the attackers, who strafed the procession at Zugdidi in western Georgia with automatic weapons and also threw a hand grenade. It was not... (GunPolicy.org)

TBILISI — Four people were killed and seven wounded in Zugdidi, western Georgia, on Sunday when an unidentified man opened sub-machine gun fire at a funeral procession. It was the burial of Gocha Esebua, the 29-years-old head of a terrorist group that took hostage U.N. officers in February 1998. According to information of the Zugdidi police, the procession came under fire several hundreds of meters away from the cemetery. Esebua was killed on March 31 in a fire... (GunPolicy.org)

GROZNY — Chechnya's ministry for Shariah state security has been checking for arms the transport entering Grozny in early hours on Wednesday. The raids are a bid to enact a law on arms passed by the Chechen parliament in November. Grozny's central market, which briskly traded in any small arms and grenade-launchers on Tuesday, is idle. Deputy Prime Minister Kazbek Makhashev, who is in charge of power ministries in the government, told Itar-Tass today that a legal... (GunPolicy.org)

IZHEVSK — Russia's internationally renowned Kalashnikov automatic rifle has been registered with the International Patent Agency in Switzerland, sources in the Izhmash company, Russia's major producer of Kalashnikovs, told Prime Tass news agency on Thursday. From now on, all Kalashnikov producers are obliged to apply to Izhmash for a licence. Russia's priority in producing Kalashnikovs, which top the list of the world's most popular types of automatic rifles, has... (GunPolicy.org)

GROZNY — The law on arms, adopted by the Chechen parliament late in December 1997, comes into force on Tuesday. The law will make it possible to the law-enforcement agencies of the Chechnya to take under firm control a major part of the armaments in the republic and to improve the crime situation, Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya Kazbek Makhashev, who is in charge of the army, the police and the security service, told Tass. According to Makhashev, a special service... (GunPolicy.org)

MOSCOW — A soldier high on acetone fumes went on a rampage and killed seven fellow servicemen at a remote base on the Pacific island of Sakhalin, military officials reported yesterday in describing the latest of at least 10 multiple slayings in the disintegrating Russian army in the last two years. The carnage Monday night spotlighted the deepening crisis afflicting Russia's armed forces, which are grossly underfunded, poorly supervised, and embittered over their... (GunPolicy.org)

MOSCOW — Russia has a new perk of sorts for judges under increasing threat of attack: a free handgun. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed a government order last month that allows judges nationwide to carry a weapon, The Moscow Times reported Wednesday. Several judges have been killed in recent years and threats against them have become increasingly common amid the breakdown of law and order that followed the 1991 Soviet collapse. Thirty of the 127 judges on... (GunPolicy.org)