The Kremlin property department, which was put under the management of Vladimir Kozhin following Pavel Borodin's removal early last year, has continued to extend its purview. It and the Russian Foreign Ministry have been given the sole right to manage Russian state property abroad--which Borodin... MORE

On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Viktor Chernomyrdin as ambassador to Ukraine and, concurrently, as plenipotentiary envoy of the Russian president for trade and economic cooperation with Ukraine. The concurrent post seems weightier and suggests that Chernomyrdin will be reporting directly to the... MORE

Relations between Russia and Japan took a potentially troublesome turn over the weekend when the governments of the two countries clashed orally over the status of negotiations aimed at resolving a long-standing territorial dispute over control of the four South Kuril Islands. The issue was... MORE

Spokesmen for Radio Liberty, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and President Vladimir Putin have all denied the report published on May 12 in Britain's Sunday Times that the Russian authorities have threatened to close down Radio Liberty's Moscow bureau if the station goes ahead with... MORE

Primorsky Krai will elect a new governor on May 27. The pre-term election became necessary in early February, when President Vladimir Putin managed to convince the region's then governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, to step down and assume the chairmanship of the State Fisheries Committee. Fourteen candidates... MORE

Russia's economic expansion slowed sharply in early 2001. GDP growth during the first quarter of 2001 is estimated at 4.2 percent by the Economics Ministry, and at 3.4 percent by the Central Bank of Russia (Russian Journal, May 11-17). Either way, the expansion has slowed... MORE

Federal spending in Russia has grown alongside revenue, but the growth has been more restrained. While the 340 billion rubles (US$12 billion) in expenditures during January-April 2001 represents a 9-percent increase (in real terms) over the first four months of 2000, the 13 percent of... MORE

Taken as a whole, recent spending data suggest that Moscow sees recentralizing fiscal policy, addressing long-unmet social needs and servicing Russia's foreign debt as at least as important as pursuing a military solution to the Chechen problem. But they also show that Moscow remains committed... MORE

As the Kremlin and newly named Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov have moved over the past several months to begin a far-reaching reform of the Russian armed forces, considerable media attention has been devoted to personnel changes atop the military hierarchy and to proposed administrative restructurings... MORE

The Kremlin has reportedly threatened to close down the Moscow bureau of Radio Liberty if the channel, which is funded by the U.S. Congress, goes through with its announced plans to begin Chechen-language broadcasts. This past February, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President Thomas A. Dine... MORE