The greatest hockey players in the world have sipped champagne from it, showered with it, taken it fishing, even slept with it. On Saturday, the most tradition-laden object in professional hockey, the Stanley Cup, is due to arrive in Moscow. The 106-year-old cup's five-day visit shows how Russia has become an indelible part of what was once an exclusively North American hockey tradition. Five Russians -- an entire on-ice shift minus the goaltender -- played for the U.S. team that won the cup this spring during the National Hockey League's playoffs. Forming the largest Russian contingent ever on a North American team, and they gained much of the credit for the championship, bringing with them the distinctive Russian style of play based on speed and deft passing. Each player gets the cup for a couple of days, and three of the Russians -- Igor Larionov, Vyacheslav Kozlov and Vyacheslav Fetisov of the champion Detroit Red Wings -- decided to bring it to their homeland.

Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov attacked President Boris Yeltsin's recently announced plans for military reform Friday, saying they would change nothing and blaming him for endangering Russia's national security. Zyuganov told reporters and Communist sympathizers at a news conference that Russia's security cannot be improved without changing the government's social and economic course. He said Yeltsin's attempts to carry out a military reform were ""just talk."" ""One needs a different economic policy, a totally different tax and budget policy, a different spiritual and moral policy. That would have created different conditions for carrying out the military reform. Mr. Yeltsin's team is incapable of such reforms,"" he said. State Duma Deputy Lev Rokhlin, leader of an unofficial movement set up to oppose Yeltsin's plans to cut the army by 500,000 men and merge several units to eliminate bureaucracy, was present in the audience but did not speak. Actual defense spending this year is just about 2 to 2.