Tajikistan's authorities announced yesterday that unauthorized rallies were held during the preceding days in the southern town of Kurgan-Tyube and the western town Tursun-Zade. The official communique claimed that the rallies only involved "several dozen people, mostly women," and that the demands were economic rather... MORE

The command of the nominally CIS peacekeeping troops in Tajikistan announced yesterday the completion of the last round of winter exercises. Russia's 201st Motor-rifle Division and associated units practiced "liberation" of sites encircled by the Tajik resistance, and the military "simulated [a] combat situation created... MORE

Ukraine aspires to a special relationship with NATO outside and beyond the framework of the Partnership for Peace program, senior Foreign Ministry official Ihor Kharchenko told a Kiev briefing yesterday. The relationship should reflect the fact that Ukraine "is an organic part of East Central... MORE

Soldiers loyal to the illegal acting defense minister, Maj. General Tudor Dabija, yesterday turned back the lawful minister, Lt. General Pavel Creanga, who attempted to enter the Defense Ministry building accompanied by government officials and parliamentary deputies. President Mircea Snegur's military and national security advisors... MORE

Responding to accusations leveled in a secret U.S. Energy Department study on nuclear safety around the world, Russian experts denied April 8 that ten Soviet-era nuclear reactors located in the former East Bloc are in a "critical state" and could cause a Chernobyl-style nuclear catastrophe.... MORE

Russian Central Bank Chairman Sergei Dubinin has announced that Russia will take steps "within the next few months" to ease currency exchange restrictions and to make the ruble fully convertible for foreign trade transactions. The move is seen as sign of confidence in Russia's reforming... MORE

A meeting between the presidents of Poland and Russia in Moscow yesterday produced the expected discordance over NATO expansion and yielded few concrete results, but was nevertheless notable for its conciliatory tone. Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski, visiting Russia for the first time since his election... MORE

Zyuganov also gave some fresh details of the shadow "Government of Popular Confidence" which will take power if Zyuganov is elected in June. It will include Communist Duma deputies Svetlana Goryacheva and Viktor Ilyukhin, Russian nationalist deputy Sergei Baburin, and the Communists' candidate for the... MORE

Communist presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov complained bitterly yesterday that his presidential campaign is being subjected to an "information blockade" by the mass media. (ITAR-TASS, April 9) He said state-controlled television was most to blame, and that the Communist campaign was getting fairer treatment in the... MORE

In a long interview recorded by Duma deputy Konstantin Borovoi and published in full by a Moscow daily yesterday, Chechen president Djohar Dudaev expressed a strong preference for direct, unmediated negotiations with Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Dudaev repeated his long-held view that he and Yeltsin... MORE