In St. Petersburg on September 5, CIS Interparliamentary chairman Vladimir Shumeiko Parliamentary presided over the opening of a conference on peace and stability in the Caucasus which included delegations from Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Shumeiko later told the press that the meeting is a prelude... MORE

In Tiraspol September 1 through 4, celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of Transdniester's secession from Moldova were attended by a group of ultranationalist and communist deputies from Russia's Duma, Basapress and Flux reported. "Transdniester is Russia's future," Russian Popular Union leader Sergei Baburin exclaimed to... MORE

On September 5, Latvia and Estonia reacted to Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Krylov's September 2 statement to BNS, in which he had suggested that Russia would use military as well as economic and political pressure to prevent the Baltic States' accession to NATO. Estonian... MORE

Russia and Belarus have entered into an agreement which seems certain to make a monetary union between the two countries a distant possibility. An intergovernmental protocol on the formation of the monetary union has been signed by the Russian and Belarusian Ministers for CIS Affairs,... MORE

Addressing the Belarusian Supreme Soviet's opening autumn session, chairman Mechislau Hrib sharply criticized President Aleksandr Lukashenko for violating the separation of power through his presidential decrees "correcting" the state budget, suspending parliamentary immunity, transferring the parliament building into the ownership of the executive branch while... MORE

Ukraine's foreign ministry announced September 5 that Council of Europe's bureau of the parliamentary assembly has decided to recommend Ukraine for admission to the CE, Interfax-Ukraine reported. The decision is in line with the CE senior political official Hans-Peter Furrer's September 1 statement that Ukraine... MORE

Russia's Fuel and Energy Ministry has initiated the formation of a Transbalkan Oil Pipeline company, with Bulgarian and Greek participation, to prepare feasibility studies and eventually to lay a pipeline from Bulgaria's Black Sea port Burgas to the Greek port Alexandroupolis on the Aegean, the... MORE

The Russian Agrarian Party's congress in Moscow, announced that according to its calculations, this year's Russian harvest will not exceed 60 million tons of grain, in contrast to the 81.3 million tons which were harvested in 1994. The party's statement said Russia's agricultural production has... MORE

Speaking at a joint meeting of the presidential administration and the Central Electoral Commission, the Commission's chairman Nikolai Ryabov said that he is worried about the conduct of the elections, because his organization is not ready for them. Ryabov admitted that he has been able... MORE

The main goal of the exercises held by Russia's border troops in the Kaliningrad oblast is to prevent a possible emergency situation on the Russian Federation's far Western border, the troops' deputy commander-in-chief, Lt. General Sergei Shcherbakov, told Russia's Radio September 6. Shcherbakov said that... MORE