...The fortnight in Russian politics was dominated by several events that President Vladimir Putin's admirers held up as proof of his sincerity in fighting corruption. The first, the firing of Railways Minister Nikolai Aksenenko, was not much of a surprise. Indeed, his ouster--Aksenenko being a... MORE

?The Aksenenko firing and the Sibur crackdown were all to the good and highly encouraging to some. A major American business magazine even declared that Russia's government had at last decided to clean house. This being Russia, however, not all was as it seemed. Some... MORE

The sense that Russia and the United States were slipping back into a more adversarial relationship continued to strengthen over the past two weeks as the two sides clashed over several issues related to strategic arms control and the Bush administration resumed some of its... MORE

The most successful among the post-Soviet reformer governments, Estonia, called it quits after a falling out among the three parties of this right-of-center coalition. Prime Minister Mart Laar resigned on January 8, in agreement with his Pro Patria Union and its coalition partner, the Moderates,... MORE

?An anti-American duo--Russia and China--drowned out Central Asian voices at the meeting of foreign affairs ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries held on January 7 in Beijing. Officially labeled "extraordinary," the meeting was the first such to be held since the organization's... MORE

Vladimir Putin's second year as head of state could have been far worse, all things considered. Indeed, Russia ended 2001 with the year's economic growth estimated to have been in the range of 5.2 to 5.5 percent. This was considerably more modest a result than... MORE

After a roughly two-month period in which Russia and the United States appeared to be on track for a rapprochement of historical proportions, the year 2001 ended with the reappearance of just enough tension to suggest that a new era of diplomatic harmony between Moscow... MORE

On December 13 and 18, the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) resolved to discontinue the mandates of the OSCE missions in Estonia and Latvia, and to close the missions as of December 31. The two missions' chiefs, Doris... MORE

Acting on French and Canadian requests, Kyrgyzstan has entered into agreements with those two countries on the use of its territory by their air forces. The two agreements, signed during the last days of December, are in the form of notes exchanged by the Kyrgyz... MORE

President Vladimir Putin (or at least his law enforcement agencies) struck new blows this past fortnight against the Russian leader's main foes from the ancien regime--the oligarchs Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Spanish police arrested Gusinsky, head of Russia's largest private media group, at his... MORE