The minimum reserve Russian commercial banks must keep on deposit with the Central Bank of Russia is to be lowered to 25 percent as of May 1, Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Sergei Aleksashenko has announced. (Interfax, April 2) If Russia's economic situation improves, the... MORE

In a lengthy interview with Azerbaijan's Turan news agency, Djohar Dudaev accepted in principle Yeltsin's proposal for mediated talks. Dudaev suggested former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, Economic Freedom Party leader and Duma deputy Konstantin Borovoi, and Tatar president Mintimer Shaimiev as... MORE

Russian forces continued attacking villages in southwestern and southeastern Chechnya yesterday and today, increasingly focusing on the Vedeno district -- putative location of Djohar Dudaev's headquarters. The commanders of Russia's forces in Chechnya and of the North Caucasus military district, Lt. General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov and... MORE

Russian and OSCE mediators said yesterday that the impasse in the Karabakh settlement negotiations deepened at last week's round of negotiations in Moscow. Armenia and Karabakh on the one hand and Azerbaijan on the other fully disagreed not only on the substance, but also on... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin's office announced yesterday that Yeltsin had postponed indefinitely his official visit to Kiev, scheduled for April 4 and 5, when he was to have signed a framework political treaty. His office quoted Yeltsin as reaffirming his insistence that the treaty be signed... MORE

Communist party chairman Gennady Zyuganov and ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Yeltsin's competitors for the presidency, promptly praised the March 29 Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan agreement on a "commonwealth of integrated states" (see Monitor, March 31) and credited Yeltsin personally for acting in the spirit of the Duma's March... MORE

On the eve of Primakov's departure for New Delhi, Russian officials made clear that there would be no significant near-term upgrading of relations between Russia and India's main regional rival, Pakistan. A Russian Foreign Ministry official said March 28 that Russia had no plans to... MORE

In an act symbolizing the revival of close ties between two former Cold War allies, Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov kicked off a two-day visit to India March 30 with the signing of an agreement to set up a "hotline" between Moscow and New Delhi.... MORE

Communist party presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov has denied the report, carried March 31 by both the "Ekho Moskvy" radio station and the television channel NTV, according to which Zyuganov allegedly said that Western European-style social democracy could not emerge in Russia because this was a... MORE

Slow growth in the near term for the Russian economy was the consensus that emerged from economists at a meeting of West European specialists in Cambridge March 30-31. Expressing what they stressed were their personal opinions and not the official views of their organizations, Pekka... MORE