On June 8-9, the NATO-Ukraine Commission met in a defense ministers' session at NATO headquarters in Brussels. The nineteen allied Defense Ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart, General Oleksandr Kuzmuk, took stock of recent progress in implementing NATO-Ukraine cooperation programs and approved several measures to further... MORE

In a move which may signal some ambivalence in Moscow toward a former Cold War era ally, the Kremlin announced this week that President Vladimir Putin would not travel to Damascus to attend today's funeral of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Putin's absence is perhaps understandable,... MORE

President Vladimir Putin has named Akhmed Kadyrov, Chechnya's mufti, to head the republic's provisional administration. Federation Council Speaker Yegor Stroev made the announcement yesterday following a meeting with the head of state (Russian agencies, June 12). After Putin signed a decree instituting direct presidential rule... MORE

The Federal Security Service and tax police have reportedly searched the Moscow offices of Sokol-YuNS, a private security firm. What gives the raid significance is the fact that Sokol-YuNS provided security for Behgjet Pacolli, head of the Swiss engineering-construction firm Mabetex, which is under investigation... MORE

Estonia's Defense Minister Juri Luik told a Monitor representative yesterday that Moscow "has no means, except purely military ones, to stop Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from joining NATO." And because military means are unusable in modern Europe for the foreseeable future, Moscow is using political... MORE

Arms control intersected with Asian policy late last week when Moscow announced that President Vladimir Putin will make an unprecedented trip to North Korea sometime next month. The surprise announcement, which came only a week after a Russian-U.S. summit meeting in Moscow, was also made... MORE

On June 8, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree establishing what is, in essence, direct presidential rule over Chechnya. The move involves the creation of an administration for the Chechen republic while abolishing the office of the Russian government's representative in Chechnya. According to the... MORE

The Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) and Yabloko are moving toward either a merger or a coalition, the leaders of the two liberal groups said yesterday. In a televised joint interview aired yesterday evening, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and SPS leader Boris Nemtsov said they... MORE

Bill Clinton, finishing his last European tour as U.S. president, stopped for six hours in Kyiv on June 5. After a meeting with Clinton, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma announced, as expected, the date of the closure of the Chornobyl nuclear reactor. The Number 3 power... MORE

National Ukrainian radicals have used the death of a Ukrainian folk composer to promote their political agenda in Lviv, the largest city of western Ukraine and the region's cultural capital. Some 100,000 people, many of them carrying anti-Russian banners, took to Lviv streets May 30,... MORE