First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais yesterday maintained that Russia's Communist Party is not anxious to see the Chernomyrdin government resign and does not wish to take on responsibility for running the country. Based on his readings of economic discussions in procommunist newspapers such as... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin today created a Council on Foreign Policy to enhance his control over foreign relations, reported the presidential press service. It is unclear how the Council will interact with the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose head, Andrei Kozyrev, has yet to choose between his... MORE

Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Shakhrai resigned from the Russian government today in order to accept the parliamentary seat he won in the Rostov-on-the-Don region in southern Russia. Shakhrai won in an individual constituency race in his home region; his Party of Unity and Accord... MORE

Vitaly Mukha, Vice President of the Levoberezhny commercial bank and a Communist party nominee, defeated incumbent Ivan Indinok in a December 24 run-off election for governor of Novosibirsk region. (3) Chubais: Communists Do Not Understand Economics.

. Joining the Russian authorities to mark the December 20 anniversary of the Cheka, the Bolshevik predecessor to the NKVD and KGB, Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko announced the appointments of a new Belarusian KGB chairman and internal affairs minister. The former position goes to Uladzimir... MORE

Latvia's parliament approved yesterday with 70 votes in favor, 24 against, and six not voting, the new government headed by Andris Skele, a young and prominent businessman who does not belong to any party. The government is comprised of representatives of six out of the... MORE

Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk said yesterday that "reasonable forces" in the Russian parliament would prevail over radicals who want to renounce the 1991 Belavezha treaty. (15) The treaty, originally signed by Kravchuk, Stanislau Shushkevich, and Boris Yeltsin, abolished the USSR and established the CIS.... MORE

Asked by an interviewer to define his agency's mission "in the new conditions," Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) director Yevgeny Primakov replied that "facilitating the integration trends among the CIS countries" is a "primary task" of the SVR. Primakov did not explain how his agency... MORE

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said in a December 20 newspaper interview that his party, now the Duma's strongest by far, has "a strategy for a stage-by-stage (poetapnoe) restoration of the USSR by using the mechanisms of the referendum and political consultations...Real steps are needed,... MORE

The Russian-installed mayor of Gudermes escaped from the besieged city to tell journalists in Grozny yesterday that Russian artillery, helicopters, and assault groups on the ground were firing on Chechen fighters and civilians indiscriminately, having killed at least 100 civilians in downtown Gudermes alone. Despite... MORE