The Belarusan authorities have frozen the bank accounts of the country's few independent newspapers and imposed heavy fines on them for alleged violations of tax regulations. The measure may force the newspapers -- including Belaruskaya gazeta, Belaruskaya delovaya gazeta, Belarusky rynok, and Imya -- to... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin admitted to the Russian public in a TV interview last night that he is suffering from heart disease. He said his doctors had offered him a choice between surgery and a passive life, and that he had chosen surgery because a... MORE

Breaking his long silence, Yeltsin gave his approval in yesterday's television interview to the peace accords signed in Khasavyurt on August 31 by National Security Adviser Aleksandr Lebed and Chechen military commander Aslan Maskhadov -- with one notable exception. "I support [Lebed's] actions," Yeltsin said,... MORE

Representatives of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Kyrgyz officials signed September 3 in Bishkek an agreement on opening a center for aiding refugees in Kyrgyzstan. The country's authorities have registered some 15,000 refugees, mainly ethnic Kyrgyz from Tajikistan. Not all... MORE

German chancellor Helmut Kohl, accompanied by a large government and business delegation, completed today a three-day official visit to Ukraine. "An independent and stable Ukraine is vitally important to Germany and Europe. Europe needs Ukraine just like Ukraine needs Europe," Kohl told a news conference... MORE

Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko has released for publication proposed constitutional amendments drafted by a presidential commission, and which he had himself outlined in recent speeches. The amendments are to be submitted to a national referendum which Lukashenko has scheduled for November 7 -- the anniversary... MORE

The Kremlin is cock-a-hoop over the victory of its favorite in the September 1 gubernatorial election in Saratov oblast. The 45-year-old incumbent Dmitry Ayatskov, who fought an energetic and aggressive campaign with strong Moscow backing, romped home with 81.3 percent of the vote. His Communist... MORE

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov yesterday appeared to dash hopes that post-election Russia might be prepared to reach a speedy accommodation with the West on the subject of NATO enlargement. While delivering a speech in Switzerland, Primakov complained of "unfavorable tendencies" in the contemporary international... MORE

Anatoly Chubais, Boris Yeltsin's chief-of-staff, held a wide-ranging press conference in Moscow yesterday, which he characterized as the beginning of a new policy of openness. Chubais acknowledged that the Kremlin's silence on the state of Yeltsin's health had been counterproductive and spawned a host of... MORE

According to Defense Minister Igor Rodionov, the Russian armed forces have lost 147,000 officers over the past two-and-a-half years, over 80 percent of whom were under forty years of age. One result of this trend is that, despite concurrent force reductions, the armed forces now... MORE