On April 12, Russia's "peacekeeping" forces launched out of Abkhazia an operation aimed at occupying the upper part of Georgia's Kodori Gorge. Georgian state leadership and its fledgling military succeeded in thwarting the Russian operation, after a tense 48-hour standoff which came to the brink... MORE

After several months of often-difficult negotiations, officials from Russia and the West appeared last week to finally have achieved a breakthrough on a plan aimed at giving Moscow a more concrete role in alliance affairs. Details of these most recent negotiations have not been made... MORE

According to a host of Russian and Western sources, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has emerged as a key driving force in the adoption of the new Russia-NATO cooperation plan. Strana.ru, for example, pointed back to the December 7 meeting in Brussels at which it... MORE

Pressure on Radio Liberty's operations increased at the end of last week, when Sergei Stepashin, head of the Audit Chamber, the watchdog agency that monitors government expenditures, said he was in favor of suspending the broadcasting license of the U.S. Congress-funded radio station. Earlier this... MORE

The leadership of the Christian Democrat People's Party (CDPP, the renamed Popular Front) has modified the tactics of its anticommunist campaign in downtown Chisinau. Hundreds of hardened protesters are now picketing the parliament and the government building round the clock in a permanent location. They... MORE

Russian-U.S. bilateral relations continued along a bumpy path yesterday as the two countries jostled over a series of difficult issues that include plans to reduce strategic arms, a trade dispute and Russia's role in NATO. The geographic focus of yesterday's action was in Madrid, where,... MORE

Did the Federal Security Service (FSB) kill Khattab, the Jordanian- or Saudi-born field commander and leading figure in the Chechen rebel movement's Islamist wing? An unnamed FSB official in Djohar (Grozny), the Chechen capital, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was... MORE

In an interview conducted by journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Oleg Gaba, the official in Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration responsible for monitoring children's rights, claimed that more than ninety children have disappeared over the last year as a result of zachistki (antiguerrilla special operations) carried out by Russian... MORE

The U.S. waiver of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act--a section that banned direct government aid, including military and security assistance, to Azerbaijan--is having favorable consequences for both Azerbaijan and Armenia. Originally instituted against Azerbaijan a decade ago, the ban equally affected Armenia in... MORE

It was back to the future yesterday as a bizarre spy case threatened to further complicate relations between Russia and the United States less than six weeks before Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush hold summit talks in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Indeed, while... MORE