Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev's visit to Tehran last week may be an indicator of at least one test to future relations between Vladimir Putin's Russia and George W. Bush's incoming presidential administration. The visit was the first by a Russian defense chief since Iran's... MORE

Russia rang in the New Year with, among other things, the final version of its new/old national anthem. The hymn was played immediately after President Vladimir Putin finished his New Year's address to the nation (Russian agencies, December 31). Russia's parliament voted last month to... MORE

Moldova's President Petru Lucinschi, whose four-year term of office expires on January 15, 2001, issued a decree on December 28, 2000 dissolving the parliament and calling pre-term parliamentary elections. The parliament's powers were due to expire in March 2002. Under the presidential decree, the parliament's... MORE

The Russian State Duma this week presented President Vladimir Putin with a golden opportunity to demonstrate the environmentalist passions about which he spoke so reassuringly just prior to his recent visit to Canada. The issue involves a contentious bill which would permit Russia's Atomic Energy... MORE

Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has promised to take charge of a probe into whether the Central Bank violated the law in giving a so-called "stabilization credit" to SBS-Agro, the bank founded by the formerly powerful oligarch Aleksandr Smolensky. Last week, the Audit Chamber--the state agency... MORE

Freedom House, the New York-based human rights group, has released its annual survey, entitled "Freedom in the World 2000-2001." The survey lists both Russia and Ukraine as among the "Five Major Setbacks for Freedom," due to what its authors characterized as "growing authoritarianism and continuing... MORE

The valedictory act of the Clinton State Department caps a failed policy on Central Asia and thrusts that failure into the incoming administration's lap. The sanctions on Afghanistan as presently structured will aggravate that country's problems, increase the potential for their spillover into Central Asia,... MORE

That relations between Russia and NATO continue to improve at--at best--a halting pace was suggested yet again last week when the two sides failed to resolve differences over an agreement establishing a NATO press office in Moscow. The failure was nothing new. There had initially... MORE

Three offshore metals trading companies are suing Russian Aluminium, the metals giant formed earlier this year, for US$2.7 million for committing violence and fraud in its bid to monopolize the Russian aluminium market. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court of New York... MORE

The violence and fraud lawsuit against Russian Aluminium also alleges that United Energy Systems (UES) chief Anatoly Chubais met with Zhivilo in 1998 and demanded that he go along with Deripaska's efforts to consolidate Russia's aluminium industry and "bring it under his [Chubais'] control." Zhivilo... MORE