Russia's continuing efforts to reinsert itself as a significant player in the Middle East peace process resumed last week during a three-day visit to Moscow by Israeli President Moshe Katsav. The Israeli leader, whose post is primarily symbolic, had traveled to Russia several times before,... MORE

On January 25 the State Duma voted to amend existing legislation to lift, for most of Russia's regional governors, the restrictions which had until then limited them to a maximum of two terms in office (Russian agencies, January 25). Deputies representing the pro-Kremlin Unity and... MORE

On January 26, a special, enlarged session of Tajikistan's Security Council acknowledged the explosive growth in the narcotics traffic via Tajikistan to Russia and Europe. President Imomali Rahmonov, chairing the session, made several scathing remarks about the authorities' failure to stop the transit of Afghan-made... MORE

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy Kremlin administration chief, and Mikhail Krasnov, a former presidential legal adviser, have reportedly drafted a series of amendments of and additions to Russia's constitution which would: (1) increase the presidential term from 4 to five years; (2) consolidate around thirty of the... MORE

President Vladimir Putin met yesterday with eleven journalists from NTV, the television channel of Vladimir Gusinsky's embattled Media-Most group. Yesterday's meeting came to pass after one NTV journalist, Svetlana Sorokina, host of the channel's political talk show, Glas Naroda, asked the president on the air... MORE

As was noted with concern regarding the elections in Lithuania (see the Monitor, March 28, July 6, August 4, 11, October 6, 9, 20, 26, 2000), the now governing New Politics bloc includes influential groups which have not yet grasped the need for transparent privatization... MORE

There is usually a good deal of method in the seeming madness of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's televised outbursts. But his January 27 live performance could and did raise some doubts as to just how much method was involved this time. Not content to term the... MORE

Less than a week after the inauguration of a new U.S. president, President Vladimir Putin delivered a major foreign policy speech which appeared to come down harder on Russia's diplomats than on the country Moscow views as its primary competitor. Western accounts of Putin's January... MORE

Despite concerns over human rights violations by Russian troops in Chechnya, the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has fully restored Russia's membership in that organization. On January 25, eighty-eight deputies voted to restore the Russian delegation's voting rights, twenty voted against and eleven abstained.... MORE

In the meantime, Vsevolod Chernov, Chechnya's chief prosecutor, reported on January 27 that law enforcement bodies had detained one person suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of Kenneth Gluck, the aid worker with the group Doctors Without Borders who was kidnapped in the village of... MORE