As Metropolitan Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church recently suggested, the Russian Orthodox Church/Moscow Patriarchy seeks to perpetuate in newly independent countries a jurisdiction inherited from the former USSR. Father Gleb Yakunin, chairman of the Committee to Defend Freedom of Conscience in Russia, predicts that... MORE

Latvian president Guntis Ulmanis yesterday argued the case for NATO enlargement at a meeting with the ambassadors from NATO and European Union member countries in Riga. Ulmanis remarked that Latvia cannot afford to be a neutral state, considering its geopolitical situation and the lessons of... MORE

Russia's Constitutional Court yesterday began hearings on whether Moscow city authorities are acting legally in requiring those registering as permanent residents of the capital to pay a fee, the cost of which currently stands at 35 million rubles. During the Soviet period, every Soviet citizen... MORE

In a mixed message on the subject of Russia's entry into the Council of Europe, Boris Yeltsin spoke yesterday of Moscow's commitment to human rights and called upon the parliament to ratify "without delay" the four basic Council conventions: on human rights, on ethnic minorities,... MORE

Polish foreign minister Dariusz Rosati said yesterday that Warsaw hoped to convince Moscow that Poland's membership in NATO would increase European stability. He also indicated Poland's support for a broader security agreement between Russia and NATO. Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov is to visit Warsaw... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has issued a decree ordering the phased lifting of the arms embargo against the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the presidential press service announced yesterday. The document, signed March 9, outlines three stages for removing the sanctions. The first, effective immediately, allows... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin yesterday signed a decree standardizing principles for the sharing of power between the central authorities and the constituent republics and regions of the Russian Federation. The trail in this respect was blazed by the Republic of Tatarstan, which in 1994 signed... MORE

The Communist faction in Russia's Duma yesterday decided unanimously to submit for debate in the next few days an item on denouncing the founding documents of the CIS, signed in December 1991 at Belaya Vezha. The Communist faction acted pursuant to a decision taken the... MORE

Russian forces in the last two days continued to suffer serious losses in combat against Chechen rearguard groups covering the withdrawal of the main Chechen force from Grozny. According to incomplete official figures, Russian forces lost 110 killed, 351 wounded, and 73 missing in the... MORE

Burgeoning media speculation that defense minister Pavel Grachev will soon be dismissed, and possibly appointed secretary of the Russian Security Council, was denied in a less than categorical fashion by a presidential spokesman yesterday. Sergei Medvedev told reporters simply that he had received no documents... MORE