A new bit of "kompromat" (compromising material) against Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has appeared in the Russian press. Segodnya, the daily newspaper belonging to Vladimir Gusinsky, reported today that in March of this year, Kasyanov, who was then both a first deputy prime minister and... MORE

As has been evident for some months (see the Monitor, January 14, February 8, 10, April 5, 7, 12, 28), Moscow is trying to keep its troops in Moldova indefinitely by conferring on them an international mandate as "peacekeepers" or "guarantors of a political settlement"... MORE

President Petru Lucinschi seems to be playing an ambiguous role in these developments. On September 6, the presidential press office helpfully informed the mass media about the publication of Yevgeny Primakov's plan in that day's Moldavskie Vedomosti. Concurrently, Lucinschi gave an interview to the leading... MORE

Transdniester is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its secession from Moldova. On September 2, 1990, nonnative Russian leaders of that area and the local Russian minority of 25 percent of the population proclaimed a separate republic and the goal of preserving the Soviet Union. In... MORE

Amid the recriminations which have reverberated throughout Russia in the wake of the Kursk submarine disaster, it has been difficult to get a handle in recent weeks on what appears to have become a moving target: the Russian defense budget for 2001. A draft state... MORE

Boris Berezovsky yesterday named the "journalists and other representatives of the creative intelligentsia" to whom he plans to transfer the 49 percent stake in Russian Public Television (ORT) which he has long been said to control to be held in trust. Among Berezovsky's candidates to... MORE

Nikolai Volkov, the investigator who was leading the probe by the Prosecutor General's Office into alleged massive embezzlement from the state airline Aeroflot, spoke out about this week about his sacking late last month. Among other things, Volkov told reporters that progress in the investigation... MORE

The hostilities, pitting Islamist insurgents against government forces in Central Asia, continue in a low-intensity mode while acquiring a protracted character. With rebel strength obviously insufficient for deep penetration into Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan, the goal now seems to be to maintain a physical presence inside... MORE

A new controversy concerning the issue of press freedom in Russia is gathering steam in the wake of the news that the government's draft federal budget for next year includes an article marked "top secret" for funding the mass media. The scandal broke late last... MORE

Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, while attempting yesterday to quell the controversy surrounding secret budget funding for the mass media, revealed that, in next year's budget, spending on state media--meaning both the nonclassified and secret budget items--will in fact be much less financially transparent than in... MORE