Rene Monory, president of the French Senate (second only to the president of France in the state hierarchy), conferred this week with the presidents, prime ministers, and other top officials of the three Baltic states in their respective capitals. The discussions focused on speeding up... MORE

The secretary of Russia's Security Council, Oleg Lobov, has been removed by order of Boris Yeltsin from his post as chairman of the organizing committee for the April 19-20 nuclear security summit in Moscow. Lobov was replaced by Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. The change reportedly... MORE

Several weeks before Boris Yeltsin's scheduled trip to China, a Russian diplomat cautioned yesterday that bilateral relations between the two giants are not entirely trouble-free and that "talks on many issues are going hard." As specific examples he named disagreements on disarmament and nuclear testing,... MORE

. Tatarstan president Mintimer Shaimiev is likely to meet "very soon" with representatives of Chechen leader Djohar Dudaev to discuss the possibility of acting as mediator between the separatists and the Russian central authorities, Shaimiev's political adviser Rafael Khakimov has revealed. (Interfax, April 4) Khakimov... MORE

On April 4, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev submitted lists containing the necessary one million signatures to the Central Election Commission (TsIK) and applied for official registration as a candidate in the June presidential election. Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of Yabloko, is expected to deposit one... MORE

Georgia's request that police powers be conferred on Russian "peacekeeping" forces in Abkhazia was rejected twice in the space of two days: on April 1 in Tbilisi by Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev and a delegation of top brass from the Russian Defense Ministry, and... MORE

Russia is not the only neighbor of Ukraine to hold up the signing of a bilateral political treaty which would, among other things, consecrate existing borders. (See Monitor, March 31, April 1, & April 3) At recent talks in Izmail (in the Odessa region), the... MORE

President Yeltsin has named Lieutenant General Anatoly Semenov to be the first head of a newly created directorate within the presidential administration that will oversee Russia's two million Cossack troops. Semenov, who has spent much of his career in military intelligence, was until the middle... MORE

The International Monetary Fund has extended to Russia about $340 million (233.63 million SDR, or special drawing rights -- the Fund's artificial currency) as the first tranche of the three-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) approved by the Fund's board of executive directors last week. (Interfax,... MORE

The Duma is to consider the possibility of lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 years. The purpose of the proposal, which is being made by a group of deputies predominantly from Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party, is said to be to allow more... MORE