Rapid exports also explained the improvement in Lithuania's external balances. In 1999, Lithuania's current account deficit reached 11.2 percent of GDP. The first-quarter current account deficit this year was only 2.8 percent of GDP--a remarkable turnaround for what has been a perennial problem for the... MORE

In a shootout with Georgian antiterrorist troops, former Lieutenant-Colonel Akaki Eliava and his close associate Gocha Gvilava were killed and three accompanying gunmen arrested during the night of July 9-10. Eliava and his heavily armed men, supporters of late President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had been stopped... MORE

Russia unveiled its long-awaited Foreign Policy Concept this week, a document which is a lengthy blueprint of goals and priorities ostensibly aimed at guiding Russian policy makers. It offers, however, little significantly new and appears to raise as many questions as it answers. Signed by... MORE

Russia's new foreign policy concept, signed by President Vladimir Putin on June 28, made public on a government website on July 7 and officially presented by Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Ivanov on July 10, seems half-way clear on just one point regarding the CIS. It... MORE

Investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office and Federal Security Service (FSB) seized documents yesterday from the offices of Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-Most group in central Moscow and from the offices of NTV, Media-Most's flagship television channel, at the Ostankino TV center. It was the second seizure... MORE

Media-Most was not the authorities' sole target yesterday. The tax police launched a criminal investigation of Vagit Alekperov, president of Russia's largest oil company, LUKoil, for allegedly evading taxes by falsifying oil export operation and illegally receiving compensation for value-added tax payments. LUKoil officials denied... MORE

The key question about the moves against Vladimir Gusinsky, Vladimir Potanin, Vagit Alekperov and Boris Berezovsky is whether they are proof that President Vladimir Putin plans to keep his promise to drive the oligarchs from the corridors of power, or whether they are being carried... MORE

On July 7, the upper house of the Russian parliament--the Federation Council--agreed to set up a conciliation commission with the lower house, the Duma, to negotiate a mutually acceptable version of the law on the composition of the upper chamber (Russian agencies, July 7). Parliament... MORE

In yet another indication of a willingness among European governments to downgrade concerns over the war in Chechnya in order to rebuild ties to Moscow, foreign ministers from the European Union meeting in Brussels yesterday moved to unblock US$55 million in aid to Russia. The... MORE

Four days after the disappearance of ORT cameraman Dzmitri Zavadski in Minsk, concerns are mounting there, in Moscow and internationally that Zavadski may have gone the way of Belarusan opposition leaders Yuri Zakharenka and Viktar Hanchar, who "disappeared" in May 1999 and September 1999, respectively.... MORE