Russian president Boris Yeltsin restated yesterday in a televised interview his intention, first announced on May Day, to visit Chechnya in the near future. He listed his goals as: "First of all to thank the military, who have done a big job; meet with Chechen... MORE

The governments of Russia and Kyrgyzstan are currently negotiating a sizable transfer of stock in Kyrgyz industrial and mining enterprises to Russia as a means of repaying Russian credits to Kyrgyzstan. The country's current indebtedness for Russian state credits is reported to amount to $132... MORE

The government of Uzbekistan and the European Commission initialed April 29 in Tashkent an agreement on partnership and cooperation between Uzbekistan and the European Union. The agreement envisages, among other things, economic cooperation in various areas; creation of conditions for the establishment of joint companies;... MORE

Azerbaijan's prosecutor general Eldar Hasanov left Moscow for Baku yesterday without Ayaz Mutalibov, the former Communist party leader and ex-president of Azerbaijan, whose extradition is being sought by Baku on charges of treason and armed rebellion. Mutalibov was arrested April 11 by order of the... MORE

In separate but parallel actions yesterday, some 20,000 trade unionists marched through central Minsk airing mostly economic demands, while an estimated 7,000 supporters of national independence rallied to denounce president Aleksandr Lukashenko's pro-Moscow policies. The police attacked the pro-independence demonstrators, dozens of whom were injured.... MORE

Communists and other leftist groups staged May Day rallies in most ex-Soviet republics. Most rallies denounced the national governments for introducing economic reforms, called for restoration of the USSR, and endorsed Communist Gennady Zyuganov for the Russian presidency. Attendance ranged from moderate to poor in... MORE

Supporters of the incumbent mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, have submitted the requisite 70,000 signatures for his official registration as a candidate in the mayoral elections to be held on June 16. (Interfax, April 29) Meanwhile, elections are in full swing in Russia's second city,... MORE

Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev was quoted yesterday as saying that defense experts had drafted a military reform plan despite what he described as the absence of the necessary preconditions for implementing it. According to Grachev, it is premature to talk about reforming the army... MORE

As in Moscow, there were wide disparities in reporting between Russian and Western news agencies regarding the size of yesterday's May Day demonstration in St. Petersburg. According to Interfax, about 10,000 demonstrators turned out in Russia's second city; according to Reuters, some 35,000 pro-Communist sympathizers... MORE

A crowd of about 1,000 people gathered in downtown Moscow yesterday to hear ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Zhirinovsky said that, if he is elected president in June, he will solve the crime problem by having hooligans shot on the spot. The war in Chechnya will be... MORE