Journalists and human rights activists alike warned that what they believed happened to Babitsky could be a harbinger of what Putin was planning to do after his likely victory in the March 26 presidential election--regardless of the acting president's public claims to support democracy and... MORE

?Ironically, despite the disturbing political developments in Russia and the international outcry over apparent Russian atrocities in Chechnya, the Kremlin's major Western partners appeared over the past fortnight to be shifting the issue of the Caucasus war to the back burner and to be focusing... MORE

Perhaps not coincidentally, the apparent struggle between Russian hardliners and pragmatists that surrounded the planning for Robertson's Moscow visit came amid reports of an impending shake-up atop the Russian military leadership. Rumors were rife that Putin would move soon after his expected election in March... MORE

On February 1, Ukraine's Council on Language Policy--a blue-ribbon advisory group, empanelled by President Leonid Kuchma--approved a draft decision of the Cabinet of Ministers on "Measures to Enhance the Role of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language." The draft decision seeks to lend some... MORE

?"The arguments in Moscow's pronouncements suggest a policy shift toward defending the linguistic situation which took shape during the Soviet era. While the Russian population in Ukraine amounted then, as it does now, to some 23 percent of the total, the official policy of Russification... MORE

Russia's new Duma has handed the chairmanships of its International Affairs and its CIS Affairs committees to would-be empire restorers. The International Affairs Committee's new chairman, Dmitry Rogozin, replaces Vladimir Lukin of Yabloko in that post. Rogozin, once an aspiring Komsomol leader, now affiliated with... MORE

The fortnight saw Acting President Vladimir Putin proceed cautiously to consolidate his position in the walk-up to the March 26 presidential election. Having already removed Tatyana Dyachenko, former President Boris Yeltsin's daughter, from the post of Kremlin "image" adviser, Putin also moved against another controversial... MORE

But the most significant development in Russian politics involves the new State Duma. Some Western observers had hailed the results of last December's Duma elections as heralding a new era of "pragmatism" and legislative-executive cooperation following years of alleged obstructionism by the Communist-dominated Duma. The... MORE

The Kremlin's struggles with the West over the Russian military campaign in Chechnya persisted over the past fortnight, as criticism continued to rain down on Moscow from Europe and the United States and a host of officials from the Council of Europe descended upon the... MORE

Moscow's own hard line vis-a-vis the West over Chechnya was also reflected more broadly in a key national security document approved by Putin on January 6. Russia's so-called "concept of national security" is an overarching outline of the country's security needs and is intended both... MORE