President Leonid Kuchma announced plans on Thursday to speed up Ukraine's stalled privatization plan by temporarily maintaining the state sector in large numbers of companies. Kuchma said the country's public sector, which accounts for 60 percent of the country's production, would be divided into state... MORE

Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky lectured Western reporters on the political significance of last Saturday's brawl in the Duma, wherein he ripped the spectacles from deputy Yevgeniya Tishkovskaya, grabbed her round the neck and pulled her hair. "You do not understand the psychology of our people," he... MORE

At meeting of the Joint Consultative Commission on Disarmament, held September 12 at CIS headquarters in Minsk, several countries announced that they would be unable to reduce their conventional hardware to the levels mandated by the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) before the... MORE

Except for the mercurial president of Belarus (whose response alluded to old fears of Poland) , none of the CIS countries is known to have endorsed Boris Yeltsin's September 8 call to form a CIS political-military bloc if NATO expands, and some have explicitly turned... MORE

Held in Chisinau September 13, another round of negotiations between Moldovan president Mircea Snegur and Transdniester leader Igor Smirnov ended in failure despite a marked Moldovan retreat from its previous stance: Snegur had, shortly before the meeting, consented to federal status for Transdniester as a... MORE

Logovaz Bank chairman Boris Berezovsky has announced that he has joined American philanthropist George Soros's program to support Russian science. Berezovsky said that Soros, who has just granted $120 million to support scientific research in Russia, cannot alone back Russian scientists and scholars indefinitely, and... MORE

On Belarus radio September 13, president Aleksandr Lukashenko claimed for himself the mission of uniting the Slavic peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Alluding to reports that he might seek Russia's presidency in order to unite it with Belarus, he disclaimed any intention to challenge... MORE

Vladimir Zhirinovsky's chief military adviser, Lt. General Viktor Ustinov, has pronounced himself disappointed in Zhirinovsky and is leaving his Liberal Democratic Party. Ustinov, who is the head of the Kuibyshev Military Engineering Academy, said that he has decided to join Chernomyrdin's "Russia is Our Home."... MORE

Deputy Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission Aleksandr Ivanchenko said that all electoral coalitions and blocs are entitled to an equal amount of free air time on national television and radio starting from November 15. He said that in addition to that entitlement, each party... MORE

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's electoral bloc, "Russia is Our Home," continues to absorb the upper echelon of Russian bureaucracy into its ranks. So far, the bloc includes 10 federal ministers and the heads or deputy heads of administration of 61 out of the Russian Federation's... MORE