At a donor conference in Berlin on July 4-5, Ukraine succeeded in raising some US$320 million from forty Western nations, funding which will go to reconstruct the sarcophagus of Chornobyl's nuclear reactor Number 4, which exploded in 1986. Ukraine estimates this cost at US$768 million.... MORE

According to recent reports, the state-owned company Naftogaz Ukrainy and the Russian Itera-Holding were close to reaching an agreement on the establishment of a joint-venture which would take over supplying natural gas directly to customers, bypassing the existing gas market intermediaries (Bloomberg, Russian agencies, July... MORE

On June 25, voters in ten constituencies across Ukraine cast ballots in a by-election to fill vacancies in Ukraine's parliament. Pro-presidential forces celebrated an overwhelming victory over leftist candidates, none of whom were elected. The defeat was especially crushing for the country's Communist Party, whose... MORE

Addressing a joint session of the Russian parliament on July 8, President Vladimir Putin gave his first state of the nation address, hitting on some of his favorite themes--the need to "strengthen the state" and establish "a single vertical line of executive power" while carrying... MORE

Some of Russia's leading politicians noted the dichotomy in Putin's State of the Nation speech between his stated economic aims and his views on democracy and civil liberties. Boris Nemtsov, head of the Union of Right-Wing Forces, spoke enthusiastically about Putin's comments on the economy,... MORE

To no one's surprise, Saturday's failed test of the U.S. national missile defense system was greeted with satisfaction in Moscow and with some gloating from top Russian military leaders. A trio of Russian generals used the opportunity to restate Russian denunciations of U.S. national missile... MORE

A number of terrorist attacks took place in southern Russian over the weekend. Two policemen were killed and a local inhabitant wounded on July 8 when a bomb went off in Shelkovskaya, northern Chechnya. There were also bomb blasts in Rostov-on-Don and in Vladikavkaz, North... MORE

Among the fifteen post-Soviet countries, Moldova is the only one whose Communist Party is the most influential political force. Banned in 1991, relegalized in 1994 and eligible to compete in parliamentary elections in 1998, Moldova's Communist Party gained forty out of 101 parliamentary seats, with... MORE

On July 3, currency exchange offices opened in Uzbekistan for the first time since 1996, as the country's authorities took another tentative step towards unifying the som exchange rates and removing capital controls. The government issued a resolution allowing all licensed banks to buy hard... MORE

Russia's human rights record and, more specifically, the penchant of the country's secret services for imprisoning researchers in the security field, was the focus of a letter publicized yesterday by a Western rights group seeking the immediate release of a Russian specialist accused of high... MORE