The Russian Duma is up in arms over the fact that the OSCE has provided $350,000 to finance next Monday's presidential and parliamentary elections in Chechnya. The Duma says this means that the OSCE, of which Russia is a participating state, is treating Chechnya like... MORE

A deputy commander of the Far Eastern Military District complained yesterday that the district had not received a single new weapons system in 1995. Lt. Gen. Yuri Yakubov said that only the efforts of maintenance personnel in repairing broken-down equipment had allowed any training at... MORE

Addressing the Estonian parliament yesterday in Tallinn, Lithuanian parliament chairman Vytautas Landsbergis upheld the Baltic states' "right" to security within NATO. Landsbergis stated that admission of any one Baltic state would ipso facto "thwart diplomatic and political pressures" against the other two and facilitate their... MORE

The Russian parliament failed yesterday to adopt a motion calling on President Boris Yeltsin to step down on health grounds. The bid was undermined when it became known that Yeltsin had unexpectedly returned to work in the Kremlin. After hours of often heated debate, a... MORE

The Russian Duma has instructed its Legislation Committee to come up with proposals for re-introducing the post of vice-president. (Itar-Tass, January 22) Russia had a vice-president from 1991-93, but Boris Yeltsin fell out with Aleksandr Rutskoi and ensured that no such post was included in... MORE

In a response to what Russia claims has been the mistreatment of its diplomats in New York, Moscow police have reportedly stepped up their ticketing of foreigners -- especially Americans -- for traffic violations. The tit-for-tat reprisals between the U.S. and Russia began following a... MORE

In an address to a Russian think tank yesterday, Japan's ambassador to Russia accused Moscow of pursuing a foreign policy oriented predominantly toward the West. Takehiro Togo suggested that this bias had limited Russia's participation in the vibrant economy of the Asia Pacific region and... MORE

Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin will travel to Washington on February 5 in order to participate in the 8th session of a Russian-U.S. joint commission on trade -- the so-called Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission -- and will meet with President Bill Clinton at the White House two... MORE

More than half (54 percent) of 1,500 Russian citizens say they regret the collapse of the Soviet Union "very much." The poll was conducted in mid-January in different parts of Russia by the "Public Opinion" polling organization. Five years ago, the figure was 33 percent.... MORE

Georgian parliament chairman Zurab Zhvania announced yesterday in Tbilisi that he has conducted direct talks in Tskhinvali with the South Ossetian leaders. Such meetings do not imply recognition of South Ossetian statehood, but only of the role of Lyudvig Chibirov and Konstantin Dzugaev as elected... MORE