The violence in Chechnya continues unabated. A two-story building which housed a police station was blown up today in the city of Gudermes, leaving three of the eight people in the building at the time of the blast seriously wounded, four still unaccounted for and... MORE

The Armenian government's tender to privatize all four of the country's electricity distribution networks failed on April 21. On that day--the tender's last deadline--the assembled cabinet of ministers waited in vain in its meeting room until late in the evening for interested investors to show... MORE

Armenia's electricity distribution privatization was from the outset fraught with international political implications. After the October 1999 assassination of Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian, Vazgen's brother and successor Aram Sarkisian with his pro-Moscow ministers favored the Russian companies Itera and Rosenergoatom for this privatization project. As... MORE

Moscow's hopes of carving out a niche for itself in Korean peace negotiations--and for raising its profile in Northeast Asia more generally--appeared to suffer a setback last week when it became known that a planned visit to Russia by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had... MORE

Russia's Fatherland movement and Unity party took their first steps toward unification yesterday. In separate meetings, the political councils of both movements approved the plans to merge the two groups. Each picked eight representatives to sit on an interparty coordinating council, which will work out... MORE

The Prosecutor General's Office has filed new charges against Vladimir Gusinsky. This time, the Media-Most founder has been accused of money laundering and, according to a spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office, Leonid Troshin, the new charges have been forwarded to the Russian office of... MORE

In his capacity as chairman of Russia's state commission on Transdniester settlement, Yevgeny Primakov visited Moldova on April 18-20. In Chisinau and Tiraspol he held talks with the central government, the secessionist authorities, the mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),... MORE

In a replay of what increasingly has become a familiar story in Vladimir Putin's Russia, yet another Russian scientist was indicted last week on seemingly trumped up charges of espionage. The latest victim of the Russian Federal Security Service's (FSB) ever more heavy-handed effort to... MORE

As has been the case with the other spy trials the FSB has launched in recent years, accused spy Valentin Danilov and his lawyer remain largely in the dark as to the specifics of the charges against him. This circumstance, together with the dubious nature... MORE

The Russian government's bid to debureaucratize the economy is apparently facing huge resistance from the country's army of entrenched state officials. On April 19, the government sent a final version of its draft law "On licensing individual types of activity" for consideration by the State... MORE