Saying that Moldova now has the "toughest financial policy" among the former Soviet republics, Rossiiskaya gazeta reported May 5 that inflation there had been reduced to 2.3 percent a month in February. And this had been accomplished, the paper said, without the expedient used elsewhere... MORE

Georgian president Shevardnadze told a crowd at Stalin's birthplace in Gori that the former Soviet leader had made "a big contribution" to world history and that recent discussions of his role in World War II were often unjust, Moscow radio reported May 7. While Stalin... MORE

Denying earlier reports that Baku already had signed an agreement to lease the Gabelin radar facility to the Russian military, Azerbaijani authorities said that any lease would only come into force after the Karabakh war had been resolved, Segodnya reported May 5. Baku's statement is... MORE

Azerbaijani nationalists have announced the formation of a Front for the National Independence of Southern Azerbaijan, the TURAN agency reported April 25. "Southern Azerbaijan" is Baku's term for region in northern Iran populated by the 20 million ethnic Azerbaijanis. Although this move was sponsored by... MORE

Arguing that Moscow lacks a considered policy in Tajikistan, Novoe vremya (no.16) suggested that the Russian border guards there are not a stabilizing force because they too obviously back one side in the conflict. But that is simply a reflection of a broader problem, the... MORE

Dushanbe will issue the Tajik ruble on May 10, Moscow readio reported. Tajikistan is the last former Soviet republic to do so. Tajik authorities said they did so because Moscow had not supplied the republic with a sufficient amount of Russian rubles. And Now, Clinton... MORE

A distillery in Zhitomir has put a picture of President Clinton on 2,000 bottles of its best vodka, according to ads in Ukrainian newspapers this weekend. The new Clinton vodka is in honor of the president's visit to Kiev May 11. On the labels, Clinton... MORE

Despite Russian defense minister Grachev's statement to Itar-Tass May 4 that most of the Chechen rebels had been destroyed and that the army would soon deal with the others, intense fighting continued in Grozny and in eastern Chechnya May 4-5. The Russian agency even noted... MORE

Russian military expert Pavel Felgengauer said in the May 4 Segodnya that "Dzhokhar Dudayev helps Bill Clinton," but he noted that the Chechen leader is not helping himself. Clinton, Felgengauer suggested, will use Russia's difficulties in Chechnya to press Yeltsin on NATO expansion, but the... MORE

Moscow and Washington appear to be moving toward an agreement on Russia's plans to sell nuclear equipment to Iran. While Russian officials continue to insist that the sale will go ahead, they have signaled that they are prepared to take American concerns about proliferation into... MORE