Pointing to Japan's close defense relationship with the United States, a Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday denied that Tokyo was considering the purchase of Russian arms. (Itar-Tass, April 30) His comments followed three days of talks in Moscow between top Russian Defense Ministry officials and... MORE

Last night Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, successor to slain president Djohar Dudaev, appeared on the resistance-controlled television channel to say that the Chechen people will continue the struggle for independence after Dudaev's death. Yandarbiev's appearance conclusively lays to rest allegations spread in Grozny and Moscow through mass... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin addressed a crowd of some five thousand trade unionists in downtown Moscow today, and promised them his leadership would ensure that all wage arrears were made good. In a separate demonstration across town, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov led some five thousand demonstrators... MORE

The Belarusian police announced yesterday that it intends to prosecute more than 100 of the 204 protesters arrested April 26 during the 50,000-strong demonstration in Minsk for national independence. Those detained face heavy fines or arrest for up to 15 days under an accelerated administrative... MORE

A spokesman for the Norwegian environmental group Bellona said April 26 that three agents from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) had forced their way into the group's Murmansk office earlier that day and placed bugs on its telefax machines. The agents also took two Bellona... MORE

While praising international efforts to mediate the crisis in the Middle East, a Russian Foreign Ministry statement yesterday complained that Moscow's role in the recently achieved cease-fire in Lebanon -- and its broader status "as cosponsor of the Middle East peace process" -- had been... MORE

Russian officials who accompanied Boris Yeltsin to China suggest that Moscow's efforts to relax military tensions and reduce military forces along the Russo-Chinese border were part of a grander plan to accelerate regional economic development in the Far East. According to one official, Yeltsin's goal... MORE

An unprecedented meeting yesterday between the defense chiefs of Russia and Japan produced no agreements, but did result in the signing of a protocol aimed at promoting military contacts between the two countries. Hideo Usui, whose visit to Moscow is the first ever by a... MORE

A Chechen detachment seized the police headquarters in the town of Argun April 27, only 15 kilometers from Grozny, making off with a large quantity of arms and equipment which they carted away in police cars. The detachment returned the next day to organize a... MORE

Today's issue of the popular newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda echoes Yavlinsky's complaint about the absence of a "third force" in the Russian election campaign. Under the headline, "There are eleven presidential candidates but there is still no choice," the newspaper comments, "There's no hope any third... MORE