On December 10, two officers of the UN Mission of Observers in Georgia (UNOMIG) were abducted Abkhazia within the zone of responsibility of Russian "peacekeeping" troops. The unarmed observers, Lieutenant-Colonel Zbigniew Lehacz of Poland and Captain Evstafios Kokilidis of Greece, were seized while patrolling a... MORE

On December 10-12 in Ashgabat, delegations of Afghanistan's Taliban authorities and of the opposition northern alliance held direct negotiations for the first time since the July 1999 round in Tashkent. The Turkmen President Saparmurat Niazov and his envoy for special missions, Boris Shikhmuradov, played the... MORE

President Saparmurat Niazov courts the risk of allowing Russia to become both the primary market and transit route for Turkmen gas--the main source of income for the impoverished country. That double dependency is all the more hazardous because Russia and Turkmenistan are competitor countries--as witnessed... MORE

In another reflection of what appears to be the Kremlin's new, more aggressive arms export policy, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov traveled to Angola this week to discuss weapons deals and Russian-Angolan military cooperation. Klebanov, who oversees defense industrial matters with the Russian government... MORE

Spanish police arrested Media-Most chief Vladimir Gusinsky at his home in the resort town of Sotogrande on Spain's Costa del Sol early yesterday. Gusinsky was arrested on the basis of an international warrant issued by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office and passed on by Interpol,... MORE

Media-Most officials and supporters of Gusinsky, of course, denounced his arrest. Dmitry Ostalsky, a spokesman for the holding, accused Ustinov of "disinforming" the Spanish law enforcement authorities by sending them "completely false" material concerning "the so-called Gusinsky case." Igor Malashenko, deputy chairman of Media-Most's board... MORE

The scandal around the audio record of allegedly wiretapped phone conversations between top Ukrainian officials, including President Leonid Kuchma, is evolving into what is probably Ukraine's most serious political crisis since independence (see the Monitor, December 5). The voice reportedly identified Kuchma's indicates an individual... MORE

Clinton administration officials are reported to be keeping a wary eye on Russian President Vladimir Putin's three-day visit to Cuba, which is scheduled to start tomorrow. It is the first by a Russian president to Havana since the demise of the Soviet Union, and its... MORE

Recent polling data suggest that while President Vladimir Putin retains the support of an overwhelming majority of Russians, fewer of them are convinced that his initiatives will bring about improvements in the country. A poll taken among 1,600 Russians over November 24-27 by the All... MORE

Russian military officials initially charged that the Chechen rebel field commanders Shamil Basaev and Khattab were behind the December 9 car bombing in the Chechen village of Alkhan-Yurt, which killed twenty-one people (see the Monitor, December 11). Others have subsequently put the blame on another... MORE