Already yesterday, Lukashenko was designated as chairman of the Supreme Council and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as chairman of the Executive Committee, with Deputy Prime Ministers Aleksei Bolshakov and Mikhail Myasnikovich as vice-chairmen in charge of day-to-day operations. A budget is to be established... MORE

Last week the government of Tajikistan issued an ordinance establishing a Tajik-Russian Slavonic University with Russian as the language of instruction, to financed jointly by Tajikistan and Russia. President Imomali Rahmonov promoted the ethnic Russian mayor of the capital Dushanbe, Yuri Ponosov, to first deputy... MORE

The SSR treaty establishes three supranational, parity-based governing bodies: a Supreme Council comprised of the presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen of parliament as the community's highest policy-making authority, empowered to take mandatory decisions; a parliamentary assembly, empowered to make decisions by majority vote; and a... MORE

Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Aleksandr Lukashenko signed yesterday in the Kremlin a treaty creating a Community of Sovereign Republics -- Russian abbreviation SSR -- comprised of Russia and Belarus and open to other ex-Soviet republics. Patriarch of all Russias Aleksy II blessed the act in... MORE

The Duma's Auditing Chamber has asked the Russian Procurator General's Office to consider opening criminal charges of abuse of office against two deputy chairmen of the Russian privatization body, the State Property Committee (GKI). The action against the two officials, Petr Mostovoi and Alfred Kokh,... MORE

If presidential elections were held in Russia this weekend, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov would get 27 percent of the vote, according to a poll conducted by the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Studies. Boris Yeltsin would come in second, having increased his support from... MORE

According to reports from Moscow, a conference was held there April 2 to draft recommendations for the Russian Communist party's electoral platform and governmental program. The conference was held under the auspices of RUSO (Russian Academics of Socialist Orientation), a think tank that is backing... MORE

Russia's Democratic Choice, the party led by Yegor Gaidar, will be represented at today's ceremony registering Yeltsin's presidential candidacy. Officially, the party will announce which candidate it is going to support only after its congress in May, but party leaders made it clear yesterday that... MORE

A March 29 statement by Boris Yeltsin in which the Russian president included Bulgaria in an invitation to other CIS states to join the newly formed quadripartite union has touched off a political furor in Sofia. An estimated 10,000 Bulgarians took to the streets yesterday... MORE

An unidentified diplomatic source involved in talks taking place in Vienna said yesterday that Russia had reneged on an international agreement signed last year to promote transparency in global arms sales and that its actions were threatening the creation of a post-Cold War export control... MORE