Meeting on June 5 in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus agreed that the pace of formalizing the two states unification is "not to be rushed artificially," and that Moscow and Minsk should in the meantime focus on bilateral economic... MORE

Hermitage Capital Management has issued a report highly critical of the management of the Gazprom, Russia's largest company. Hermitage, a minority shareholder in Gazprom, wants Vadim Kleiner, research director of Hermitage, to be elected to the Gazprom board. Scrutinizing last year's accounts, Hermitage found a... MORE

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov triumphantly announced the start on June 9 of military exercises of a scale that "Russia has not seen before". The codename is "Mobilnost (Mobility) – 2004" and indeed the key element is the airlift of three combat units: one company... MORE

Prior to this week's cabinet of ministers' parliamentary vote of confidence, according the new Constitution, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili issued a surprise reshuffling of officials to lead the "force" ministries. Today he is expected to make the announcement official. At a news conference on June... MORE

Unofficially, Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he will not attend the NATO summit in Istanbul on June 28-29. NATO spokesman James Appathurai said several days ago that "discussions are still ongoing with Moscow, and the alliance has not been officially notified whether Putin... MORE

Prosecutors in Qatar have asked that two Russian special services agents accused of assassinating former Chechen separatist President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in February be sentenced to death. Dmitri Afanasyev, an attorney representing the accused Russians, said the prosecution had asked for the death penalty in the... MORE

The past week has seen surprising developments on several fronts in Russia's war on corruption. Taken together, they remind us of the magnitude of the corruption that has such deep roots. But these events also demonstrate that the Russian state is sporadic and selective in... MORE

A statue of Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader and KGB head, has been erected in front of the building housing the Karelia Federal Security Service (FSB) directorate in Petrozavodsk, Karelia's capital city. The 3.5-meter statue stands in a square on a street named after Andropov,... MORE

The US-led coalition is obsessed with establishing a corridor sanitaire along the Afghanistan border with Pakistan, creating other security holes inside Afghanistan. Most notably, suspected Taliban insurgents are now operating in districts well inside the border and are blatantly attacking foreign aid workers and their... MORE

At a June 2 meeting of the mixed monitoring commission in Tskhinvali, the Georgian delegation demonstrated its lack of confidence in Major-General Svyatoslav Nabzdorov, demanding that he be recalled by Russia. Nabzdorov is the Russian commander of peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia. He is being... MORE