Trading in tsarist bonds was suspended in Paris yesterday after Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin promised that "Russia will pay its debts." His remark was understood to mean that Russia intends to repay debts inherited from the tsars but repudiated by the Bolsheviks following the... MORE

In a statement issued yesterday, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry rebutted the Russian Duma's recent resolution, which declared Moldova's Transdniester region a "zone of special Russian interests" and mandated the Russian government to station Russian troops there permanently. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry commented that the resolution jeopardizes... MORE

The Abkhaz leadership yesterday claimed an overwhelming turnout in the November 24 legislative election. Out of 35 legislative seats, 30 were adjudicated in the first round and 5 will be filled after runoffs. Most candidates were Communists and their allies. The Abkhaz leaders failed to... MORE

Armenia's Constitutional Court on November 22 declared the result of the September 22 presidential election valid and rejected the opposition's petition to invalidate it as fraudulent. The Court's ruling is final, unappealable, and effective immediately. The opposition had predicted such a ruling by the politicized... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin has proposed to Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev that a bilateral document be drafted that would "secure the rights of the Russian language as such on the entire territory of Kazakhstan," Russian presidential spokesman Sergey Yastrzhembsky announced yesterday. The proposal was a... MORE

An official unlawfully appointed by President Aleksandr Lukashenko as head of the Central Election Commission claimed today that more than 84 percent of Belarusan voters had turned out in the constitutional referendum, and that an unspecified but purportedly large majority voted for the president's draft... MORE

President Robert Kocharian was reelected yesterday to a five-year term with 86 percent of the vote, Karabakh 's electoral commission reported today. Kocharian's two challengers had agreed with him on full independence from Azerbaijan. A trained engineer and head of Karabakh's military effort during most... MORE

Back in Moscow after a visit to the U.S., Aleksandr Lebed told Russian TV that he sees Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov as a potential ally in the event of a presidential contest. (RTR, November 24) This is the second time Lebed has made such a... MORE

Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov is campaigning for his ministry to have equal powers with the Tax Police. He is also asking that citizens be required to furnish the police with documentation showing how they came by the funds with which they bought expensive cars or... MORE

The seventh round of Russian-Japanese negotiations on fishing rights in the waters around the disputed Kuril Islands concluded in Tokyo on November 22, apparently without recording any progress. A Russian report said that Japan's unwillingness to recognize Russian sovereignty over the islands remains the main... MORE