Yet another quarrel between Gazprom and Rosneft, Russian state-owned energy companies that are due to merge but cannot agree on conditions, hardly qualifies as news (Financial Times, March 16). Their respective CEOs -- Alexei Miller and Sergei Bogdanchikov -- have been at odds since the... MORE

Protests by Belarusian entrepreneurs against the imposition of an 18% value-added tax (VAT) on all imports from Russia have continued for the past two weeks. The reaction of the Lukashenka government has been described aptly as a "stick and a carrot" policy: a combination of... MORE

On March 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a one-day working visit to Ukraine. The event was designed to signal a major improvement in the atmosphere of bilateral relations. For Putin, it was both a fence-mending move toward Ukraine and an international damage-limitation move after... MORE

Exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky is planning to visit Ukraine in the very near future, a trip that may prove uncomfortable for Ukrainian authorities because of two factors. First, Berezovsky may plan to be in Ukraine when Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives on March 19.... MORE

Sergei Bagapsh, Eduard Kokoiti, and Arkady Gukasian, leaders respectively of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Karabakh, spent most of this week meeting with Russian officials in Moscow. They also held a publicly reported meeting there among themselves on March 16. Transnistria leader Igor Smirnov was expected... MORE

Moscow's political and business elites spent much of yesterday (March 17) discussing who was behind an apparent attempt that morning to kill Anatoly Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems (UES), Russia's electricity monopoly, and the architect of Russia's controversial post-Soviet privatization program. The three main... MORE

The long-running international efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict are again facing an uncertain future following the cancellation of the next and potentially decisive round of talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which were scheduled for March 2 in Prague. The official reason for the delay... MORE

Sergei Bagapsh, the self-styled president of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, arrived in Moscow on March 11. The visit, originally scheduled for March 3, was postponed as many as three times. The trip was reportedly rescheduled due to Bagapsh's 56th birthday, holidays in Moscow, persisting... MORE