Moscow's unilateral cease-fire completely broke down over the weekend, Interfax reported May 1. Russian forces said that they had been attacked in Grozny and elsewhere and were returning fire. In other developments, the head of a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in... MORE

On April 30, President Yeltsin signed a law extending military service from 18 months to two years and ending most student deferments, Interfax reported. That law, rammed through the Russian parliament in April, had drawn stinging comment from many Russians. Former acting Prime Minister Yegor... MORE

As Moscow has adopted an ever tougher line, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev has sought to exploit his own political weakness as a source of strength, Michael Dobbs said in the April 30 Washington Post. Kozyrev first tried this tactic at the Stockholm CSCE Ministerial... MORE

Writing in the April 22 Krasnaya zvezda, commentator Aleksandr Gol'ts said that "only the most naive" Western leaders can fail to recall Foreign Minister Kozyrev's Stockholm speech when they hear his most recent statements about defending ethnic Russians abroad. The West had a chance then... MORE

Boris Yeltsin is using Lt. Gen. Barsukov's Main Guards Department to tap the phones of political opponents, an article in the April 26 Izvestiya charged. The paper said that these extralegal activities flowed from a secret decree issued following the October 1993 dispersal of the... MORE

Boris Yeltsin has signed a new law that will lengthen prison terms by three years for anyone who commits a crime against judges, policemen and their relatives, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported April 27. But He Has Little Support.

Only 4 or 5% of the Russian population now support Boris Yeltsin, Russia's leading pollster Yury Levada told the April 21 Trud. Despite that, the head of the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion said, mass uprisings are unlikely. People are tired of... MORE

Happily claiming this rubric for his own, Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin held an organizational meeting of his new political bloc, "Russia is Our Home," Itar-Tass reported April 29. While Foreign Minister Kozyrev has said he will not join the bloc, others have rushed to join... MORE

Yeltsin's national security advisor Yuri Baturin said in the April 28 Izvestiya that Russian reforms would encounter more "stormy weather" in 1995 and that the "inertia of instability" will continue until at least 2002. Even the lessening of inflation in recent months may not help.... MORE

In the April 19 Delovoy mir, Ivan Stoyanov points out that the Russian timber industry is now 80% privatized but that government policy has led to a restoration of a monopoly situation with all its attendant corruption and inefficiencies. That is because all the "private"... MORE