Retired Lt. General Aleksandr Lebed confirmed yesterday that he and two other presidential candidates, Grigory Yavlinsky and Svyatoslav Fedorov, have decided to unite behind a single candidate and will announce no later than May 20 which one of them has been selected. (Interfax, April 24)... MORE

A White House spokesman suggested yesterday that Russia's participation in the June 27-29 summit of the G-7 in Lyons, France would be "much broader" than in G-7 meetings that preceded the last one in Moscow. Michael McCurry said that developments at the Moscow summit had... MORE

Mikhail Gorbachev, who is running for election as president of Russia, canceled a public meeting in the Siberian city of Omsk yesterday after being slapped in the face by an unidentified man. The former Soviet president was said to be shaken but not seriously hurt;... MORE

Following talks with German chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn, Polish prime minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz reiterated yesterday that Moscow has no right to veto Polish membership in NATO. But, in what was probably a concession to Kohl, Cimoszewicz also allowed that Moscow ought to be consulted... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin's national security advisor Yuri Baturin conferred in Dushanbe with Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov April 22 and 23 on continuing Russian military and technical assistance to Tajikistan. Baturin told a briefing afterward that Moscow supports a political resolution of the civil conflict... MORE

Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe yesterday in Strasbourg that Ukraine's choice of national independence and reforms is "irreversible." Kuchma went on to note that the Commonwealth of Independent States "doesn't work" and that any future formation of... MORE

Looking back at the Moscow G-7 Summit, Japanese officials and analysts say that Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto raised the subject of the Kuril Islands territorial dispute with Boris Yeltsin, but wisely chose not to push the Russian president for a decision. "Russia for the time... MORE

At their meeting with Boris Yeltsin in Moscow, G-7 leaders failed to heed urgent appeals from Russian democrats and international groups such as Helsinki Watch and Doctors Without Borders (see Monitor, April 19) to encourage Yeltsin to end the massacre of civilians in Chechnya. Unwittingly,... MORE

Like Zyuganov, presidential hopeful Svyatoslav Fedorov dismissed the latest opinion poll findings as "far from reality." (Itar-Tass, Reuters, UPI, April 23) Fedorov told a press conference April 23 that he, Grigory Yavlinsky, and retired Lt. General Aleksandr Lebed have agreed to unite behind a single... MORE

Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, who has complained of biased media and polling data, dismissed the latest findings at a press conference April 23, saying the democrats "always appear to be faring better than they really are." The poll showed Grigory Yavlinsky in third place with... MORE