The president of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiev, and the governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev, have signed agreements on scientific, technical and cultural cooperation and on industrial cooperation between the Republic of Tatarstan and the city of St. Petersburg. (Interfax, August 21) At present, Petersburg sells... MORE

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry chief spokesman Yuri Serhiev rejected as "slander" the allegations by senior Russian officials that Ukrainian "mercenaries" are fighting against Russian forces in Chechnya. In the latest case, Russia's first deputy internal affairs minister and commander of internal troops, Col. General Anatoly Shkirko,... MORE

The Tajik government has rushed troop reinforcements to the western city of Tursun-Zade after two rival armed groups clashed there August 19 for the third time in the space of ten days, adding new dead and wounded to earlier casualties. A special governmental commission comprised... MORE

Anatoly Gordeev, the Communist candidate in Saratov oblast's gubernatorial election, seems to be growing desperate. Well-known and respected in the region, Gordeev is nonetheless lagging far behind the favorite, incumbent governor Dmitri Ayatskov. Monitor's correspondent in Saratov oblast says the reason is that the regional... MORE

A U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) report has concluded that Russia emerged in 1995 as the world's leading arms exporter to the developing world. According to the recently released study, Russia's defense industries rebounded last year by concluding arms agreements worth some $6 billion, up... MORE

Open sniping between the various factions in the Russian leadership continued yesterday with the promise of more to come as Aleksandr Lebed finally succeeded in having his close associate Sergei Glazyev appointed to a senior Kremlin post. Glazyev is to be director of the Security... MORE

"Not my problem," snapped Pulikovsky when asked yesterday by Chechen collaborationist regime officials to avoid casualties among Grozny's remaining civilian population in the planned assault on the city. Pulikovsky's remark was quoted to Russian media by representatives of Doku Zavgaev's pro-Moscow administration. The political leadership... MORE

Contrary to yesterday's premature reports, Russia's chief security official and presidential plenipotentiary for Chechnya, Aleksandr Lebed, is not yet in Chechnya and may fly there today at the earliest. Lebed's spokesmen yesterday reaffirmed that he opposed the planned military storming of Grozny as militarily unsound,... MORE

There is increasing evidence that Yeltsin may be too sick to rule and that he has relinquished control of the government. As Grozny prepared to face another bloodbath yesterday and thousands of terrified civilians fled the city, Yeltsin was not conferring with his ministers and... MORE

Top Russian military and political leaders continued yesterday to devote their tactical planning skills at least as much to winning political skirmishes in the Kremlin as to resolving hostilities on the ground in Chechnya. The most aggressive sally on the Kremlin battlefield came, not surprisingly,... MORE