Russia and Ukraine might be at loggerheads over the sale to Pakistan of Ukrainian tanks equipped with Russian guns but the two seem ready to cooperate in aircraft production. On February 20 the Russian government approved a draft plan for joint development of the Antonov... MORE

Currently, 5 Iranian companies are leasing 20 Russian Tu-154 airliners through a company based in Cyprus. Aircraft Leasing Systems (ALS) rents the planes from their Russian builder, Aviakor in Samara, and then leases them to the Iranians. ALS general director Aleksandr Smolko said yesterday that... MORE

An estimated 1,500 women staged a "march against poverty and hunger" on February 22, banging empty pots as they went through central Minsk despite a snowstorm. At an ensuing political rally, the women called for President Aleksandr Lukashenko's resignation. This protest action was called by... MORE

Attending celebrations of the Russian armed forces' day on Minsk's central square, Lukashenko staged a meeting on February 23 with founding activists of the "Direct Action" youth organization, which is supposed to become a country-wide movement "supporting the president and his political and economic policies."... MORE

Zia Buniadov, 75, vice-chairman of the governing New Azerbaijan party (chaired by President Haidar Aliev), vice-president of Azerbaijan's Academy of Sciences, and parliamentary deputy, was knifed and shot to death outside his Baku home on February 21 by unidentified assassins. Political motives are widely suspected... MORE

Three soldiers of Russia's "peacekeeping" forces in Abkhazia were killed when two military vehicles ran over mines in the security zone on September 22. Russian headquarters in Sukhumi and Abkhaz security warned that they would take "adequate measures" against Georgian "bandit formations" -- a term... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin yesterday made his first public appearance since suffering from pneumonia two months ago. Yeltsin laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Kremlin to mark the Defender of the Fatherland day, a national holiday formerly called Red... MORE

. Moscow maintained its hard-line rhetoric against NATO enlargement over the weekend, although there were also the barest of hints that negotiations between Russia and the West may have made some small progress. Those more positive indications came yesterday, when Russian president Boris Yeltsin told... MORE

Both Russia and NATO hope to use the ongoing Vienna talks to update the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty in a fashion that would make the Eastward expansion of NATO more palatable to Russia. During her recent visit to Moscow U.S. secretary of... MORE

At a meeting in Baku on February 18-20, Presidents Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan and Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia signed a Declaration of Deepening Strategic Partnership, an agreement on cooperation in the oil industry and oil transportation, and other documents on bilateral cooperation. The political declaration... MORE