Coalition government has recently become a buzzword in Ukraine's corridors of power. Pro-presidential oligarchic factions from the center-right majority in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) have asked Premier Viktor Yushchenko to include representatives from majority factions in the cabinet of ministers. They argue that if this... MORE

Pope John Paul II has accepted an invitation from President Leonid Kuchma and Ukraine's Eastern-rite Catholic Episcopate to visit Ukraine. The Vatican's spokesman, Cardinal Joaquin Navarro-Valls, confirmed on January 23 that the Pope will pay a state and pastoral visit in June to Kyiv and... MORE

Contrary to some earlier reports, a number of Russian sources have said in recent days that President Vladimir Putin has indeed signed off on a military reform plan designed to both restructure and reduce Russia's troubled armed forces. Earlier ones had claimed that enduring differences... MORE

A number of economic and political factors stiffened international creditor resolve toward Russia in 2000. In contrast to late 1998 and early 1999, Moscow was unable to convincingly plead poverty. GDP rose by some 7 percent. The federal budget surplus was reported at nearly US$7... MORE

Should it continue, the stalemate over Russia's 2001 Paris Club obligations will do little to defuse Moscow's growing economic and political tensions with G7 governments, and especially Washington. Moreover, Aleksei Mozhin, Russia's executive director at the IMF, affirmed on January 12 that the Fund will... MORE

The automotive sector was one of the most dynamic parts of Russia's industrial sector in 1999, when car and truck production grew 12 and 22 percent, respectively. Growth seems to have continued in 2000, but did slow sharply. This suggests that Russian industry in 2001... MORE

Sibirsky Aluminum (Sibal) has apparently succeeded in what seems to be a hostile takeover of one of Russia's largest automobile producers. Sibal's acquisition of a blocking stake in the Gorkovsky Avtomobilnyi Zavod (GAZ) auto factory, based in Nizhny Novgorod, raises new questions about the consolidation... MORE

Already testy relations between Russia and the Bush administration grew a little testier last week when Moscow announced that it had begun work on a second nuclear reactor for the Iranian nuclear power station at Bushehr. Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov, who has long... MORE

President Vladimir Putin met yesterday in the Kremlin with twenty-one leading oligarchs, his second such with representatives of Russian big business. The first was held last July, in the midst of a series of police raids and criminal cases against a number of powerful businesses,... MORE

While the tycoons were meeting with President Vladimir Putin, a scandal was swirling around one of them. The organizers of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which opens today, announced that they had withdrawn the invitation of Oleg Deripaska, head of Russian Aluminum... MORE