Nearly two weeks after reports suggested that President Vladimir Putin had indeed signed off on a package of military reform documents to drive the Kremlin's high profile defense restructuring effort (see the Monitor, January 26), there are now new rumors indicating that military reform in... MORE

Yevgeny Nazdratenko, who earlier this week stepped down as governor of the crisis-ridden Primorsky Krai region of Russia's Far East, has given his first interview since his resignation. Nazdratenko told the Primorsky newspaper Yezhednevnye Novosti that the only reason he stepped down was because Primorsky... MORE

As anticipated (see the Monitor, January 22), the Ukrainian-Russian military "agreements," discussed during Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev's recent visit to Kyiv, are for the most part not the done deals which Moscow made them out to be. Nor have they intruded as yet into... MORE

Already testy relations between Russia and the United States took another hit last week when reports surfaced that a Russian diplomat had defected to the United States this past October. Few details of the case have been made public, but Russian irritation with the way... MORE

Kenneth Gluck, the American aid worker with the group Doctors Without Borders who was kidnapped near the Chechen town of town of Starye Atagi on January 9, was freed in the late hours of February 3-4, not far from where he had been seized. According... MORE

The latest issue of the biweekly newspaper Novaya gazeta includes an article by Oleg Lurye, the well-known investigative journalist, who makes some sensational claims about the links between Russian organized crime and state officials. The claims, according to Lurye, are included in a classified report... MORE

A recent meeting of the BALTSEA assistance group, the signing of a comprehensive Lithuanian-Polish military agreement, and discussions at the Security Policy Conference in Munich have underscored the Baltic states' steady progress toward meeting the qualifications for admission to NATO. In spite of that progress,... MORE

President Vladimir Putin announced during a cabinet meeting today that he had fired Energy Minister Aleksandr Gavrin today and that he had called Primorsky Krai Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko, who informed the head of state that he planned to step down. In addition, Putin ordered his... MORE

After spending the first part of January trying to stare down its foreign creditors, the Russian government blinked on January 19. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin had claimed for weeks that Russia was too poor to repay the principal coming due... MORE

While Moscow had to be dragged kicking and screaming to honor its financial obligations, there are a number of compelling arguments in favor of fully covering Russia's sovereign debt obligations in 2001. As Illarionov has pointed out, many current economic problems would be helped, not... MORE