Russia's government has approved a project to produce hybrid cars running both on conventional fuel-powered engines and battery-powered electricity, Russian billionaire and project author Mikhail Prokhorov said on Wednesday.

A fighter plane of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces crashed on Wednesday during a training flight, killing the pilot, the country's Defense Ministry said.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Bloc will move into the opposition party without waiting until a new parliamentary majority is formed, the bloc's deputy head said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko suffered a second political defeat in under a month on Wednesday when parliament voted for the dismissal of her government.

Ukraine's new President Viktor Yanukovych scored a new victory on Wednesday when his supporters rallied enough votes in parliament to dismiss the government headed by his political arch-rival Yulia Tymoshenko.

The Ukrainian parliament dismissed on Wednesday the government led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Nino Burjanadze, a leading Georgian opposition figure, has flown to Moscow to seek to improve ties broken off after the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, a Georgian news agency reported on Wednesday.

Novosti-Georgia said the former parliamentary speaker - a key ally of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in the 2003 Rose Revolution but now a bitter critic of the government as head of the Democratic Movement-United Georgia - flew to Moscow on Tuesday.

"Political dialogue with Russia plays a crucial role in Georgian unity," Burdzhanadze said before leaving Tbilisi.

"While Georgian opposition parties mull a joint candidate for the upcoming mayoral polls in Tbilisi, and the authorities wage smear campaigns against the opposition, I am engaged in high politics."

"Georgian society has no idea about real Georgian-Russian relations and the ways of reconciliation the two countries," she added. After Russia, she intends to visit Europe and the United States.

Tbilisi broke off diplomatic relations with Moscow after their five-day war over South Ossetia in August 2008. Russia later recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another former Georgian province, Abkhazia, in a move described by Georgia as "annexation."

A growing number of Georgian opposition leaders consider the political dialogue between Russia and Georgia a paramount task for Georgia's future, and former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli has visited Moscow several times in recent months.

"The main obstacle to a normal political relationship between the two countries is Saakashvili's policy. Only a change in the political situation in Tbilisi could ease the situation," he said late last year in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

RIA Novosti

The head of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's party said on Wednesday that Prime Minster Yulia Tymoshenko's policies had led to a decline in the population of the former Soviet republic.

Violence and corruption in Russia's legal system could ultimately spell the end for the Russian state as it is today, the jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in a newspaper article published on Wednesday.

A slim majority of Ukrainians favor joining the European Union but almost two thirds oppose NATO membership, according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych gave a strong hint on Tuesday that he may not recognize the independence of the former Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.