If the pending NATO-Russia agreement exemplified the positive side in Russia's relations with the West, some other developments reflected continuing areas of discord, however. With respect to ties between Moscow and Washington, the most serious involved a lingering trade dispute that had begun with the... MORE

The Bush administration's move, at the end of 2001, to suspend Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act has enabled the United States to enter into military assistance agreements with Azerbaijan and Armenia. The decade-old Section 907, originally passed by the U.S. Congress to show... MORE

In the last week of March, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Eurasia Policy Mira Ricardel led a delegation to Baku on an unprecedented mission. For the first time since Azerbaijan became independent, and after eight years of pro-Western foreign policy, the country was... MORE

The U.S. waiver of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act is having favorable consequences also for Armenia, paving the way for U.S. military and security assistance to that country as well. The suspension of section 907 made possible in late March the visit of... MORE

March 26 marked the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin's election as president, and the events of the fortnight only underscored the Jekyll-and-Hyde character of the country's domestic politics in the Putin era. On the one hand, the Kremlin's judicial reform got a boost when the... MORE

On the other hand, the fortnight saw some rather ominous developments on the political front, particularly in the area of press freedom. Media-Socium, a non-commercial partnership headed by Yevgeny Primakov, the former prime minister, and Arkady Volsky, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and... MORE

As the fortnight drew to a close, the signs were multiplying that Russian and U.S. diplomats might yet narrow differences on a host of security and other issues that have threatened to roil next month's Russian-U.S. summit meeting in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The most... MORE

Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine and Vladimir Voronin of Moldova held an unprecedented trilateral meeting on March 17 in Odessa. Initiated by the Kremlin, apparently as a "Western CIS" counterpart to meetings of Central Asia's CIS countries, the Odessa meeting was... MORE

Ten countries aspirant to NATO membership--the Vilnius Ten group of countries--held a summit meeting in Bucharest on March 25-26. As anticipated, the event focused on the Black Sea direction of NATO's enlargement. With the Baltic states already on a firm track toward membership in the... MORE

March 5 marked the 49th anniversary of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's death, and one of Russia's more unlikely freedom fighters, Boris Berezovsky, chose the occasion to reveal his evidence for an allegation he had been making since late last year: that Russia's special services were... MORE