On November 5, Azerbaijan held parliamentary elections on a multiparty basis for the second time in its post-Soviet--indeed its national--history. At stake were 100 seats in single mandate districts and twenty-five seats to be contested by party slates countrywide on a proportional basis. The governing... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov wound up a two-day visit to Baghdad this week in which he signaled Moscow's desire to further solidify its ties with Saddam Hussein's regime. Russia has taken the lead in promoting what has become an expanding number of foreign civilian... MORE

Aleksandr Mikhailov, the newly elected governor of Kursk Oblast, apologized to his predecessor, Aleksandr Rutskoi, for comments he made last week which were widely perceived as anti-Semitic. Mikhailov, who is a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), said in an interview... MORE

Boris Berezovsky said yesterday evening that he would return to Russia only when the Aeroflot case is investigated in a fully legal way. Berezovsky--who made his comments from New York in an interview broadcast live on NTV television--failed to appear yesterday at the Prosecutor General's... MORE

Georgia is being singled out as the only CIS member country whose citizens will no longer qualify for visa-free travel to and residence in Russia. The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed on November 10 its decision to impose unilateral travel and residency visa requirements on... MORE

Making a virtue of necessity and seeking to increase international pressure on the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin this week urged radical reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Putin's very public proposal was nothing new in itself. What did appear significant in... MORE

Boris Berezovsky has apparently joined his fellow media magnate and erstwhile archrival, Media-Most chief Vladimir Gusinsky, in political exile. Berezovsky, who was set to appear today at the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow for questioning in the Aeroflot case, involving the alleged embezzlement of hundreds... MORE

Law enforcement authorities in Poland have reportedly arrested twenty-four members of a criminal group which had been trafficking contraband Russian weapons in Western Europe. While a majority of those detained were Polish, the two heads of the group were Russian citizens from the North Caucasus--a... MORE

A grumbling but loyal ally, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus is quietly collecting his rewards from the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin seems clearly more willing than his predecessor Boris Yeltsin to reward Lukashenka. Some of Putin's latest favors may even be stretching the ability... MORE

According to Uzbekistan's Department of Statistics, the country's GDP grew 3.8 percent in the first half of 2000 as agricultural and industrial output rose 7.1 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively. However, both the IMF and the World Bank publicly disagree with the Uzbek government's statistical... MORE