Kyrgyzstan is holding the third presidential election in its existence on October 29. Incumbent President Askar Akaev seeks reelection to a five-year term. Alone among the Central Asian presidents, Akaev is not a former member of the Soviet nomenklatura. A professor of physics, Akaev was... MORE

Aleksei Kudrin, Russia's deputy prime minister who doubles as finance minister, announced yesterday that Russia would ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a new short-term credit, covering eighteen to twenty-four months, in November. Kudrin, who made his comments while attending a conference of finance... MORE

German Gref, Russia's economic development and trade minister, predicted this week that Russia's gross domestic product would rise by 6.8-7 percent this year, but acknowledged that the growth was largely contingent on such factors as high world oil prices. If structural reform of Russia's economy... MORE

On October 17 in Baku, October 18 in Tbilisi and October 19 in Ankara, a long-awaited set of agreements which bring the start of construction work on the oil export pipeline to Ceyhan (Turkey) within sight was signed. The interested companies have joined in a... MORE

The electoral debacle of Fatherland Union/Lithuanian Conservatives (FU/LC) marks the end of an era in the politics of the restored Lithuanian state. The Conservatives and the allied Christian-Democrat Party are the direct successors to the 1988-91 Sajudis liberation movement. Winners of the 1990 and 1996... MORE

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ran large current account deficits during 1997-1998, which heightened their vulnerability to the trade shock produced by Russia's August 1998 financial collapse. All three economies went into recession in 1999, as domestic spending and imports fell in order to restore external... MORE

Latvia and Lithuania also recorded dramatic reductions in the current accounts deficits in the first quarter of 2000. But in contrast to Estonia, these deficits then rose sharply in the second quarter. Further progress on restoring external balance may depend on the fiscal policy choices... MORE

Viktor Chernomyrdin, the former Russian prime minister, confirmed this week that he plans to sue George Bush Jr., the U.S. Republican presidential candidate, for Bush's allegations that funds which the International Monetary Fund sent to Russia ended up in the pockets of Chernomyrdin and other... MORE

Yegor Stroev, speaker of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, met yesterday with President Vladimir Putin. Following the meeting, Stroev quoted Putin as saying that neither he nor his administration had anything to due with the October 21 decision by the... MORE

Having wrong-footed the ouster of President Slobodan Milosevic, the Russian government has tried over the past several weeks to make up lost ground and build friendly relations with newly elected Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica. The Russian efforts have been manifested in a series of statements... MORE