On October 11, the Ukrainian MP Viktor Zherdytsky was arrested in Germany on charges of fraud and abuse of office. Zherdytsky, suspected of embezzling 86 million deutschmarks intended for Nazi-era slave laborers, denied any wrongdoing. Ukraine's international image and the popular image of people's deputy... MORE

The strong economic growth which took hold in Ukraine during the first half of 2000 showed no sign of slowing in the third quarter: GDP grew 5 percent in the first nine months of the year. Industrial output grew nearly 12 percent during this time,... MORE

Inflationary pressures are perhaps the most serious obstacle to a long-term recovery in Ukraine. Kyiv has not received IMF assistance in more than a year, and foreign investors continue to give Ukraine (and the rest of the CIS, except for Kazakhstan) a wide berth. The... MORE

If the words of Russian space officials over the past few days are to be believed, Mir--the Soviet-launched space station which seemingly has had nine lives--may be living out the last of them. Yesterday Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who oversees space-related issues within the... MORE

A lawyer representing Aleksandr Rutskoi, the incumbent governor of Kursk Oblast who was barred from running in the region's October 22 gubernatorial race by a last-minute court decision, said yesterday that he has sent an appeal to Aleksandr Veshnyakov, head of the federal Central Election... MORE

Aleksandr Rutskoi is no ordinary Russian governor. An air force general, hero of the Afghan War and President Boris Yeltsin's first and last vice president, in October 1993 Rutskoi and then Russian Supreme Soviet speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov led an armed rebellion by opponents of Yeltsin's... MORE

The fourth round of Russian-Georgian military negotiations has provided fresh evidence of Moscow's attempts to retain bases in Georgia. While scrapping and/or withdrawing the hardware which exceeds Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty ceilings, the Russians are trying to maintain control, in one form or... MORE

On October 20 and 23, two convoys of Russian armored vehicles moved from Russia's Akhalkalaki base in Georgia to Russia's base at Gyumri in Armenia for permanent deployment there. The convoys, consisting of ten vehicles each--a mix of armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles--are... MORE

As the media has focused in recent weeks on the risky mission to recover bodies from the lost Russian submarine Kursk, there has been less attention directed at the related but broader issue of what the Kursk disaster says about Russian naval capabilities and the... MORE

Voting in the Kursk Oblast gubernatorial elections took place yesterday, and the oblast's election commission reported early today that the turnout was 51.7 percent, just a margin higher than the 50 percent required to validate the contest. Because none of the seven candidates in the... MORE