
On Tuesday the Russian Finance Ministry made a regular scheduled payment (27,666,000 dollars) to settle Russia's debt to the International Monetary Fund.
In all, Russia will transfer approximately 2.1 billion dollars to the IMF this year.
As of January 1, 2003, Russia's total debt to the bank stood at 6.4 billion dollars. Last January-May 840 million dollars were paid.
This year's foreign debt payments of Russia total 17.3 billion dollars.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a briefing in Beijing that the question about the shipment of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Syria had not been resolved yet. However, Syrian Ambassador to Russia Riyad Haddad said that S-300 missile systems had been delivered to Syria last month