Based on preliminary results from 58 out of 89 subjects of the Russian Federation (representing one-third of the electorate, including Moscow and St. Petersburg), Central Electoral Commission chief Nikolai Rybaov has officially confirmed that the Russian Communist party, the Liberal Democrats, "Russia is Our Home"... MORE

President Heydar Aliyev and other Azerbaijani officials conferred December 12 and 13 in Baku with Iran's deputy foreign minister Mahmud Vaezi. Both sides at the talks were cited as seeking to overcome the "cool" state of bilateral relations. In what sounded like allusions to Russia,... MORE

President Mircea Snegur has asked the government in writing to dismiss the editors in chief of the country's two main newspapers, Moldova suverana and Nezavisimaya Moldova. The president's move follows the two newspapers' recent publication of an open letter by the country's literary patriarch, novelist... MORE

Foreign investments in Russia's telecommunications sector are expected to grow by at least 24 percent to some $520 million next year compared with 1995, according to a statement from the Communications Ministry yesterday. The foreign investments will account for half of total investments in the... MORE

President Guntis Ulmanis announced yesterday, while on an official visit to Germany, the nomination of Andris Skele as prime minister of Latvia. A nonconventional solution to end a protracted government crisis, Skele's candidacy has been under discussion in Riga since last week and has picked... MORE

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin greeted the final signature of a Bosnian peace deal in Paris yesterday by repeating Moscow's call for the permanent lifting of UN sanctions on Serbia-led rump Yugoslavia, "as we have always favored." The move would be "important for the political solution... MORE

. Representatives of Crimea's ethnic Russian majority are being quoted as hoping for a communist-nationalist victory in Russia's December 17 elections to the Duma. Their spokesmen are quoted as saying that if Crimean Russians had the right to take part in the Duma elections, many... MORE

Chechen forces yesterday briefly retook the republic's second-largest city, Gudermes (30 km/20 miles east of Grozny) after a successful pre-dawn attack by an estimated 600 fighters. Russian reinforcements rushing in from Grozny sealed off Gudermes to interdict Chechen reinforcements, also blocking media access. Army tanks... MORE

The Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), which is expected to do well in Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections, will act in the Duma to "cancel all illegal decisions of the government in the privatization sphere." The statement was made at an meeting in Moscow by Sergei... MORE

High-level delegations of Ukraine's and Hungary's Defense Ministries have signed in Budapest a framework agreement on military cooperation among the two countries. The agreement provides inter alia for supplies of Ukrainian military hardware to Hungary in 1996 and 1997, maintenance of Hungarian military equipment in... MORE