Calling Iran "an outlaw state," Secretary of State Warren Christopher sought to put more pressure on Yeltsin to call off Russian plans to sell nuclear technology to Tehran. Noting that Iran had tried to acquire weapons-grade plutonium from Kazakhstan, a plan that failed thanks to... MORE

Three American citizens were briefly detained near Vladivostok when local authorities found that the Americans had made video tapes of a border check point, Tass said May 1. After an investigation by the Federal Security Service, the three were released, Itar-Tass said May 2. Less... MORE

Foreign minister Kozyrev's recent remarks on the use of force to defend ethnic Russians in the former Soviet republics continue to draw criticism in Russia. Duma Foreign Relations Committee chairman Vladimir Lukin that Kozyrev's statement reflects the fact that "our country has less and less... MORE

A Russian company established to exploit oil in the Arctic sea has been unable to find any Western investors because the Russian government has failed to pass a law on who owns the oil in territorial waters and how profits would be divided between the... MORE

In the April 26 Literaturnaya gazeta, writer Mikhail Danilov reports that IMF loans intended to help clean up the Usinsk oil spill "for some reason" have never arrived from Moscow. For that reason and because Moscow has done so little to clean up the spill,... MORE

An Interpol official said there had been some $80 billion in illegal capital flight from Russia between 1991 and 1994, Moscow radio reported April 27. Russian authorities have acknowledged that approximately $1.5 billion is leaving the country every month. Accurate statistics are difficult to establish;... MORE

The purchasing power of the income of an average Russian fell 14 percent last year, Rossiiskaya gazeta reported April 22. But in some regions, it fell by 40 percent or more, the paper said. Particularly hard hit were Russians in the Urals region because of... MORE

Federal Security Service director Sergei Stepashin said that "we are not particularly worried about" nationalist movements in Tatarstan, Vechernyaya Kazan reported April 4. The FSS director did reject the calls of some Tatar parliamentarians to remove that republic's KGB from federal jurisdiction. Stepashin said that... MORE

Duma member Mikhail Zadornov told Moscow radio April 30 that officials at Russia's interior ministry had confirmed Japanese reports that at least some AUM sect members had received firearms training at a secret GRU base near the Russian city of Ryazan. Moscow has officially denied... MORE

An article in Novoye vremya, no. 15, suggests that Russia has not seen the last of the dissidents. While few dissidents have made an easy transition to new conditions, Aleksandr Daniel warns that there numbers are likely to expand. "The dissident movement," he writes, "is... MORE