Russian President Vladimir Putin won a standing ovation when he told Azerbaijan's parliament last week that the eventual solution to the conflict with Armenia should not differentiate between the victors and vanquished, and that it should proceed from the territorial integrity of states and the... MORE

Russian military and government officials have moved quickly over the past week to fan the flames of discord which have broken out in Europe over health risks said to be associated with NATO's use of depleted uranium munitions during the alliance's 1999 air war in... MORE

Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev met on January 13 with representatives of the international aid agency Doctors Without Borders to discuss the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping in Chechnya of one of its aid workers, Kenneth Gluck. The representatives from Doctors Without Borders asked Aushev to help... MORE

President Vladimir Putin's January 9-10 visit to Azerbaijan--the first by a Russian president since Azerbaijan gained its independence--showed him to be not only an empty-handed suitor (see the Monitor, January 11), but also one who combines wooing with threats. During the visit's final moments and... MORE

At the turn of the year, Romania took over the rotating chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In that capacity, Bucharest risks damaging its credibility if it is seen as falling back on irredentist views to question the independent statehood of... MORE

Today marks the 279th anniversary of the founding of the Russian chief prosecutor's office, and some 3,500 of the country's prosecutors gathered in Moscow yesterday for a three-day conference to commemorate the event and discuss their work. President Vladimir Putin addressed them--with almost nothing but... MORE

The Uzbek, Kyrgyz and other authorities in Central Asia are concerned over reports that guerrillas of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), under its military leader Juma Namangani, have reentered Tajikistan from Afghanistan. The Central Asian summit, held in Almaty on January 5 (see the... MORE

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev reported in mid-December that 2000 GDP would grow 9 percent (Russian agencies, December 13) while the IMF has projected an 8 percent rate (Bloomberg, December 19). Whatever the figure, it is clear that the country grew at its fastest rate since... MORE

Thanks to Kazakhstan's strong economic growth, the consolidated (state and local) budget surplus had risen to 46 billion tenge (US$317 million, or 2.1 percent of GDP) in the first ten months of 2000. The expanding economy boosted revenues to 485 billion tenge, 6 percent greater... MORE

Segodnya, the daily newspaper of Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-Most group, published an article today which is likely to raise the Kremlin's collective blood pressure. The paper reported that yesterday President Vladimir Putin fired Aleksandr Grigoryev, head of the Federal Security Service department for St. Petersburg and... MORE