The Clinton administration yesterday expressed concern over what a State Department spokesman described as "frightening" Russian threats to level Grozny, the capital of war-torn Chechnya, and over the accompanying appearance of confusion in the Kremlin. Conflicting signals from Moscow on Chechnya are said to have... MORE

In another sign of mounting discontent among troops serving in Russia's various "power" ministries, thirty soldiers from an Interior Ministry unit in the Perm region reportedly sent AWOL on August 19. The first-year draftees had complained of atrocious living conditions and brutal hazing in the... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry yesterday defended the arrest and detention by the country's Federal Security Service of Aleksandr Nikitin, a Russian researcher charged with treason for work done in collaboration with the Norwegian environmental group Bellona. Despite protests from environmental and human rights groups within and... MORE

Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov's military and security adviser, Zafar Ikromov, admitted at a Dushanbe briefing yesterday that the opposition recaptured Tavildara along with a number of villages August 16. The government had until yesterday attempted to cover up that serious defeat. (See Monitor, August 19)... MORE

In a Nezavisimaya gazeta interview last week, South Ossetian Supreme Soviet chairman Lyudvig Chibirov expressed confidence that unification of South and North Ossetia "will take place, if not today then tomorrow." Chibirov was further cited as telling the OSCE mission to Georgia that the merger... MORE

The Georgian government has returned to Germany more than 100,000 books which were stored in Georgia after having been seized by Soviet authorities in Germany. Tbilisi is now receiving German electronic equipment for Georgian libraries as a sign of appreciation for its gesture. (Itar-Tass, August... MORE

The IMF mission that has been in Moscow for the past week is said to have been pleased with what it found and concluded that the Russian government is coming to grips with the problem of tax collection. The mission returned to Washington yesterday and... MORE

The election campaign in the Saratov oblast, where three candidates will compete on September 1 for the post of governor, is becoming intense. The incumbent governor, Dmitri Ayatskov, has taken a leaf out Boris Yeltsin's book and is using all the advantages of his position... MORE

In separate remarks made yesterday in Moscow that highlighted the many difficulties facing Rodionov, the Duma's defense committee chairman warned that underfunding of the army was leading to a potentially explosive situation among military personnel. General Lev Rokhlin, who commanded Russian troops in Grozny in... MORE

While still failing to reveal in detail his views on a number of the Russian army's most intractable problems, newly-appointed Minister of Defense Igor Rodionov has begun in a series of recent interviews to flesh out the principles that will apparently guide his efforts to... MORE