Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has put into force a decision of the National Security and Defense Council to enhance security measures for the presidential election's second round slated for Sunday.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has approved the country's new military doctrine and the state policy on nuclear deterrence until 2020.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sent a tough warning to Iran on Friday, saying its nuclear program could be discussed at the UN Security Council if Tehran fails to respond to Western compromises.

Moscow is waiting for clarification from the United States over its plans to deploy missile defense elements in Romania, the Russian foreign minister said Friday.

Ukrainian nationalists on Friday converged outside the Polish embassy to protest against Warsaw's condemnation of President Viktor Yushchenko's decision to bestow a top honor on a Ukrainian nationalist leader.

A Ukrainian nationalist leader on Friday urged his supporters to back Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in this weekend's presidential poll runoff in a bid to defeat pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

Georgia is in talks with U.S. companies on airing its Russian-language television channel in the Caucasus region after accusing its French broadcast partner of bowing to pressure from Russia, a Russian paper said on Friday.

The broadcasts of First Caucasian, which was launched in mid-January via Eutelsat's satellite, stopped at the end of last week. Tbilisi accused the French operator of bowing to Russian censorship demands. The firm strongly denied the charge.

The channel targeted audiences throughout the Caucasus, including in Russia's troubled republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, as well as the former Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, recognized by Moscow as independent states.

Georgia's public broadcaster, which incorporates the channel, is holding talks with U.S. firms on broadcasts in Russian territory via their satellites, Kommersant said.

"We are in talks with American operators, with several of them, but I have no right to disclose our partners' names or give contract volumes before the talks are completed," First Caucasian director Zurab Dvali told the daily.

"We hope the Americans will not bow to Gazprom," another official at the channel told the paper, referring to a contract between Eutelsat and a media unit of the Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom.

Eutelsat earlier denied that Russian pressure was behind the decision to cease the broadcasts, saying a final contract with Georgia's cash-strapped broadcaster had not been signed.

Gazprom-media dismissed the allegation as "nonsense," the paper said. Company spokesman Irina Zenkova said, as quoted by the daily, that the contract with Eutelsat was signed in March 2009, well ahead of Georgia's plans to broadcast in Russian.

Eutelsat spokeswoman Vanessa O'Connor said earlier the company hopes to agree a broadcast contract with First Caucasian in the future.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's administration said the channel was to provide an unbiased coverage of events, mainly in the volatile Caucasus, for Russian audiences.

RIA Novosti

Polish President Lech Kaczynski has said a decree by outgoing Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to declare Stepan Bandera, whom many see as a Nazi collaborator during WWII, a national hero, runs contrary to the historical truth.

Kazakhstan faces dwindling fuel stocks over suspended Russian oil supplies, the Central Asian country's energy minister warned on Friday.

A new election law that has triggered a brawl in Ukraine's parliament and led to threats of mass protest rallies echoing the 2004 "orange revolution" came into force on Friday ahead of a crucial presidential poll this weekend.