Russian aviation yesterday carried out a powerful bomb-rocket attack on Dachnoe, a village on the outskirts of Djohar [Grozny], the Chechen capital. Russian intelligence had reported that a Chechen unit based there was preparing such an attack. While official sources denied reports that a battle... MORE

Western-supported efforts by the Georgian government to engage the Abkhaz leadership in meaningful negotiations have triggered an internal political backlash from President Eduard Shevardnadze's opponents of various stripes. Following his re-election as president in April, Shevardnadze put a new team in charge of the Abkhaz... MORE

Annual inflation rates in many CIS economies, including Russia and Ukraine, are currently in the 20-50 percent range and rising. Not so in Armenia. Consumer price inflation there fell from 8.7 percent in 1998 to 0.8 percent in 1999, and continues to drop. In monthly... MORE

In a case with possible implications for both Russia's human rights record and its relations with South Korea, the Russian Supreme Court this week overturned the conviction of a former Russian diplomat on charges of spying for Seoul. In a decision rendered on July 25,... MORE

Media-Most founder and head Vladimir Gusinsky flew to Spain to visit his family today after the Prosecutor General's Office dropped its conditions that Gusinsky, who is under investigation for allegedly embezzling state funds, not leave Moscow during the course of investigation. The office had repeatedly... MORE

President Vladimir Putin is set to meet tomorrow with eighteen of Russia's leading oligarchs as part of an attempt to smooth relations between the authorities and the tycoons, many of whom have recently been the objects of unwanted attention from the tax and law enforcement... MORE

On June 30 Goskomstat reported that Russia's GDP grew by a stunning 8.4 percent during the first quarter of 2000. (Sotsial'no Ekonomicheskoye Polozhenie Rossii, June 2000). This is the highest rate of quarterly growth Russia has reported since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and... MORE

While these figures look impressive, it is generally agreed that Russia's rapid growth results largely from high export prices, statistical base effects, and the weak exchange rate that followed the August 1998 financial crisis. (The exchange rate fell from US$1=6.2 rubles as of mid-1998 to... MORE

A meeting of Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine and Petru Lucinschi of Moldova, tentatively scheduled to be held in late July in Moscow or Kyiv, has been canceled. They were to have discussed the terms of "settling" the Transdniester conflict. But... MORE

Among the interesting sidebars to the main event at this past weekend's summit of Group of Seven countries and Russia was President Vladimir Putin's decision to avoid any direct, bilateral talks with his French counterpart, President Jacques Chirac. Putin's cold shoulder toward Paris was anything... MORE