Complete coverage of the U.S.-Russia summit, being held July 6-8 in Moscow.

It was a typical December night in Moscow. The cold was biting, the snow thick and dry. In the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, hundreds of intelligence officers met as they did every year to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police.

Perhaps nothing in Russia can whip up public hysteria like the notion of a Masonic conspiracy to take over the country. The word ""democrat"" has also become a widely pejorative term, and long hair on men is certainly a no-no for much of the Russian public.

The OSCE's democracy watchdog on Thursday canceled its planned observer mission for the March 2 presidential election, saying Moscow had placed restrictions severely hampering its monitors.

Rosneft to Reorganize DebtMineral Deposit Sales in '08Kazakh Oil, Mining DealsPotash Licenses in Doubt$3.4Bln Kazakh PipelineTrade Surplus NarrowsNorilsk Interest in RefinerKarimov Avoided Gas TalksIndian Plant Ban May EndGazprom Exports LessVSMPO Stake May Be SoldSanoma Drops on Q4 FallSocGen Completes PurchaseFor the Record

The economy is growing too fast and a modest slowdown may be needed to prevent overheating, a senior central banker said Thursday, in a rare sign of dissent from President Vladimir Putin's goal of rapid growth.

Gazprom threatened on Thursday to halt gas supplies to Ukraine over purported debts of $1.5 billion for previous deliveries, but assured the European Union that it would not suffer from the cutoff.

Gazprom will sign a deal to buy the entire annual gas output from ExxonMobil's Sakhalin-1 field this spring, an executive said Thursday.

In his first full face-to-face interview in more than four years, former Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky said it would be ""so difficult"" for Dmitry Medvedev to end the practice of selective prosecution of the Kremlin's political enemies.

Israeli officials mistakenly sent confidential files about fugitive former Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin to the Russian anti-money laundering watchdog, an aide to the businessman said Thursday.