President Yeltsin has named Yuri Yarov as deputy head of the presidential administration. Yarov will leave his post of first deputy premier to coordinate the team of Yeltsin's presidential advisers. (Interfax, July 24) Yeltsin is said to be leaning toward the choice of a banker... MORE

In Moscow yesterday, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and the governor of Khabarovsk krai, Viktor Ishaev, signed eleven documents that will form the basis of a power-sharing agreement between the region and the federal center. (Interfax, July 24) This is the first power-sharing agreement negotiated since... MORE

The Russian newspaper Argumenty i fakty yesterday identified Platon Obukhov, a 28-year-old diplomat and the son of a former Soviet deputy foreign minister, as the Russian spy whose arrest led in May to a major diplomatic wrangle between Moscow and London. (See Monitor, May 7... MORE

Russian Central Bank chairman Sergei Dubinin says the IMF will decide in mid-August whether to grant Russia the delayed July tranche of its $10.2 billion loan, but that the government must first prove that it can improve its tax collection procedures. Deputy Economics Minister Sergei... MORE

The State Department announced yesterday that the U.S. has lifted a ban, carried over from the Soviet-era, on exports of arms and military equipment to Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Ukraine should also become eligible "very shortly." Russia has been exempt from the... MORE

Russia is prepared to airlift some $200,000 worth of foodstuffs and other humanitarian aid to North Korea, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday. Moscow undertook similar operations on two occasions last year, and a Russian Interior Ministry official speculated early this year that Russia might... MORE

Russian first deputy foreign minister Boris Pastukhov announced yesterday that all the heads of the CIS member states have agreed to attend the inauguration of Russian Boris Yeltsin's second term of office. The presidents will begin arriving in Moscow August 8 for the event scheduled... MORE

Security Council Secretary Aleksandr Lebed plans to set up his own political movement, "Truth and Order," which is intended to play an active role in the regional elections set for October-December. The name comes from Lebed's election program. Joining him will be the economist Sergei... MORE

Lebed says he has no objection to NATO's plans for eastward expansion. He told the Financial Times in an interview published today that NATO's plans would be expensive and unwise from the West's point of view, but that it would represent no threat to Russia... MORE

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has again asked Moscow to reactivate the interrupted bilateral negotiations. Foreign Minister Hennady Udovenko said yesterday that Kiev has forwarded to Moscow specific proposals for a prompt "working meeting" of the foreign ministers, an early official visit to Moscow by Ukraine's... MORE