Writing in theMay 26 Segodnya, military analyst Pavel Felgengauer said that Westernplans to enlarge NATO have unified the Russian elite and the Russianpeople, and thus have reduced Yeltsin's freedom to maneuver on thisissue. Earlier, he said, American leaders had assumed that if theyconvinced Yeltsin, they... MORE

Rossiiskaya gazeta reported May 23 that Beijing hadrejected Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev's call for apartnership with China, noting Hong Kong newspaper accounts thatGrachev had offered to divide Asia with China for purposes of policingthe region. But Moscow continues to pursue an active policy in... MORE

If the West continues to oppose theflow of Central Asian and Caucasian oil through Russia because ofinstability in Chechnya, we can point to similar instability in easternTurkey, Lukoil president Vakhit Alikperov told a Moscow pressconference May 27. Lukoil is prepared to spend as much as... MORE

Boris Yeltsin and representatives of the Dumaare moving toward a compromise on the vetoed election bill, Izvestiyareported May 27. Yeltsin, the paper said, will drop his objections tomost of the Duma's bill if the Duma will agree to have the FederationCouncil be made up of... MORE

The Russian economy willsuffer, and Moscow will find it harder to get into variousinternational economic organizations if Russia and Belarus actuallyform a true customs union, Izvestiya reported May 26. The paper saidthat those behind the union are doing it for political rather thaneconomic reasons. It... MORE

Russian state propertycommission chief Sergey Belyayev told representatives of Western firmsthat Moscow would need to sell 20 trillion rubles worth of propertythis year if the government were to realize the 9 trillion rubles ofstate income from such sales, Rossiiskie vesti reported May 26. That isthe... MORE

Because of inadequate controls, Russian officials have squandered morethan 40 trillion rubles--$8 billion--in recent years, finance ministerAleksandr Panskov told the Duma last week, Segodnyareported May 26. Hesaid that figure was contained in a recent Control and AuditingAdministration report. European Union Keeps Russia On Hold.

Hoping to keep up the pressure onMoscow to find a peaceful solution to the Chechen war, the EuropeanUnion decided not to lift its hold on a trade agreement with Moscow.According to a widely covered meeting of the Union's foreign ministers,the Europeans were divided on this... MORE

The Federal Security Servicearchivist has acknowledged that the Soviet government destroyed allrecords concerning Stalin's execution of 4,000 Polish officers at Katynduring World War II, Segodnya reported May 26. Anatoly Krayushkin saidthat Khrushchev had ordered the destruction of more than 21,000Katyn-related documents in 1959. But he... MORE

The brother of DmitriYakubovsky, the Russian entrepreneur at the center of a scandal, hasbeen detained in Switzerland, Moscow radio reports. The twobrothers--Dmitri and Stanislav--first came to public attention in 1993after they paid for a Swiss shopping spree by the wife of formersecurity minister Viktor Barannikov.... MORE