Moldovan president-elect Petru Lucinschi told a Russian news agency yesterday that he has asked Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma to consider sending Ukrainian peacekeeping units to eastern Moldova. The request was made at Lucinschi's January 5 meeting in Odessa with Kuchma. (Interfax, January) The move aims... MORE

Russia's ultranationalist parliamentarian, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, arrived in Tripoli yesterday for talks with Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Libya's state-controlled JANA news agency said that Zhirinovsky had come to renew Russia's solidarity with Libya against international sanctions imposed on the Gadhafi regime. (UPI, January 7) Poland... MORE

Polish prime minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said yesterday that Warsaw was stepping up its preparations to join NATO, despite recently intensifying objections to the expansion of the Western alliance voiced in Moscow. Cimoszewicz said that Poland's National Defense Committee -- comprised of the country's president, prime... MORE

Senior Kremlin official Sergei Shakhrai's statement that the drive for Russia-Belarus unification represents an effective response to NATO's eastward enlargement (see Monitor, January 7) was a topic in yesterday's talks in Warsaw between Polish prime minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz and Lithuanian foreign minister Algirdas Saudargas. Cimoszewicz... MORE

A Russian delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Serov yesterday began an official visit to Baku. Also on the delegation are the minister for CIS affairs, Aman Tuleev, the deputy minister of fuel and energy, Anatoli Shatalov, and the leaders of the Transneft and... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin's deputy chief of staff, Sergei Shakhrai, stated yesterday that "full integration" and "unification" of Russia and Belarus "can become the most effective response to NATO's eastward enlargement...It meets their strategic interests, rallies society, consolidates power, and increases Russia's international authority." (Itar-Tass,... MORE

Despite reports that "the last Russian soldier has left Chechnya," a Russian newspaper claimed yesterday that as many as 1,058 Russian POWs -- a number roughly equal to an entire regiment -- remain in the Caucasus republic. (Novaya ezhednevnaya gazeta, January 6) The report provoked... MORE

Among those weighing in yesterday on the enlargement issue was Sergei Shakhrai (see below for Shakhrai's linkage of Russia's relations with Belarus to NATO enlargement). Yeltsin's deputy chief of staff repeated earlier Russian threats that Moscow will consider abandoning a number of recent arms control... MORE

The imminent appearance on NATO's eastern flank of a disciplined and combat capable Russian military machine would also not seem to be among the more credible threats that the Kremlin brings to the table in its current efforts to dissuade the West from enlarging NATO.... MORE

A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman on January 4 denied a newspaper report claiming that Tokyo intends to concentrate on expanding its political dialogue with Russia, to the exclusion of its long-standing dispute with Moscow over ownership of the Kuril Islands. The spokesman said that Japan's... MORE