Yevhen Shcherban, one of the richest businessmen in Donbass and in all Ukraine, was gunned down on November 3 in broad daylight and in front of scores of witnesses at Donetsk airport. Shcherban's wife was killed with him. Several bodyguards and members of his airplane... MORE

A Ukrainian air force MiG-29 disappeared last Thursday while on a flight from an airbase on the Crimean peninsula to one near Kiev. Unless the wreckage of the plane can be found and recovered, the cause of this accident may never be determined. One plausible... MORE

Prime Minister Hrant Bagratian resigned yesterday "at his own request," and President Levon Ter-Petrosian appointed Armen Sarkisian to the post on the same day. Sarkisian, 43, a former Physics professor at Yerevan University, has served since 1992 as ambassador to Britain and, concurrently, to several... MORE

Tajik opposition forces have established an overland route between the Afghan border and the opposition-controlled area in the Pamir foothills, according to Dushanbe military officials. The officials spoke following confirmation of reports that opposition units have captured several key villages in Tavildara district near the... MORE

A U.S. businessman involved in a long dispute over control of one of Moscow's best-known hotels, the luxury Radisson-Slavyanskaya, was shot to death Sunday by an unknown gunman. Paul Tatum, 39, a former Republican party activist in Oklahoma, was killed by a single assailant near... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin's doctors are expected to meet today to set the date for his heart surgery. The meeting will be attended by the leading heart surgeon, Michael DeBakey, who arrived in Moscow yesterday. But Presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky hinted on November 1 that the... MORE

Emergency measures by the Russian government in the last two weeks have considerably increased the flow of revenues to the cash-strapped budget, presidential aide Anatoly Chubais claimed over the weekend. (Itar-Tass, November 2) Finance Minister Aleksandr Livshits confirmed that tax revenues had increased in the... MORE

Moscow police have detained a woman who is accused of having splashed gasoline on a U.S. security guard in the Embassy in Moscow and tried to set him on fire. No one was seriously hurt in the October 31 incident. The woman is reported to... MORE

In a gubernatorial election held on Sunday in Pskov oblast in north-eastern Russia, a member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic party was elected governor, defeating the pro-government incumbent. Zhirinovsky spent three days in the region, canvassing support for his colleague. This is the first gubernatorial... MORE

Boris Yeltsin has issued a decree approving the creation of a Foreign Policy Council within the presidential administration, Russian sources reported on November 1. The president's foreign policy advisor, Dmitry Ryurikov, has been named to head the council. It is unclear how the new body,... MORE