Armenian newspapers now print only 44,500 copies a day, the Noyan Tapan news agency reported June 1. As a result, ever more Armenians must rely almost exclusively on the government-controlled electronic media, opposition leaders complained at a media seminar in Yerevan June 5-6. That meeting... MORE

Tbilisi will pay two billion rubles to Moscow to support Russian border guards in Georgia, the BGI agency said May 30. Moreover, the Georgian parliament was told, some 800 Georgian citizens will be enlisted in Russian Federation border guard units. Russians Complain of Discrimination in... MORE

Boris Suprunyuk, a leader of the Russian community in Kazakhstan and editor of the opposition newspaper Glas, told Moskovsky komsomolets June 7 that President Nursultan Nazarbayev was oppressing ethnic Russians there. Suprunyuk said that many Russians had been persecuted and their suffering revealed Nazarbayev to... MORE

More than 53,000 Russians died from drinking tainted vodka during 1994, Vecherny klub reported June 6. The paper said that fears about such contamination in domestic brands were powering demand for imported ones. During the same year, Russians spent over $4 billion on imported alcohol.... MORE

Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev told Itar-Tass June 6 that he would continue to lead the resistance to Russian aggression in order to prevent the war there from degenerating into a civil conflict among different groups of Chechens. Meanwhile, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who has... MORE

After a meeting with British officials in London, Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev said he was "somewhat" reassured that the new rapid deployment force organized by NATO countries for Bosnia did not necessarily go beyond UN-approved peacekeeping procedures, Itar-Tass reported June 6. But a Russian... MORE

President Leonid Kuchma dropped plans to hold a June 28 referendum on his powers after the Ukrainian parliament voted 240 to 81 to adopt a "constitutional treaty" that would give Kuchma many of the new powers he had sought. While the agreement ends the standoff... MORE

After denying June 5 that Yeltsin had seen the resignation papers of Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Lebed, the president's spokesman told Itar-Tass June 6 that Yeltsin was considering what to do with the controversial commander of the 14th Russian Army. Yeltsin has asked his security advisor... MORE

An analysis of the recent strengthening of the ruble argues that Moscow officials talked up the ruble to help the Russian government with its budget deficit. According to the June 6 Moskovsky komsomolets, Russians bought rubles with their dollars in expectation that the dollar would... MORE

Bureaucratic fights have severely restricted Moscow's ability to use the assistance it has received, Kommersant-Daily reported June 6. Only $800 million of the $4 billion Russia has received from the World Bank has been spent, the paper noted. And as a result, Russia has been... MORE