Russia and NATO took another small step forward in their unsteady effort at reconciliation yesterday when Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov traveled to Florence for a meeting with the foreign ministers of NATO member countries. Ivanov's visit, which also included several separate bilateral meetings, marked... MORE

Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan and Imomali Rahmonov of Tajikistan headed governmental delegations to the summit of the CIS Customs Union (CU) on May 23 in Minsk. The non-Russian participants were hoping against... MORE

On May 19 in Vilnius, the three Baltic states and six other countries appealed to NATO to invite all of them simultaneously to join the alliance at its 2002 summit. The "Vilnius Declaration" capped a conference of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian ministers of foreign... MORE

Like Latvia and Lithuania, Estonia's economy also suffered from the effects of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, with its GDP falling 1.1 percent in 1999 (BNS, May 16). However, as Estonia had worked in 1997-98 to tighten fiscal policy and control its budget and external... MORE

At the beginning of the week, a number of reports--some backed with evidence, others of a more hypothetical nature--appeared in the Russian press concerning the death of the Chechen rebel movement. At least one of the reports, however, was confirmed, concerning the death of rebel... MORE

The Kremlin's official outrage machine went into high gear once again this week over alleged Western support for Chechen rebel fighters. But Moscow's latest broadside appeared oddly directed and unlikely to produce any positive results. It came on May 22, when Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's... MORE

Russian Public Television (ORT), the 51-percent state-owned television company widely believed to be controlled by Boris Berezovsky, today regained the right to continue broadcasting on the state's first channel. In announcing that its broadcast license would be extended for five more years, Russian Press Minister... MORE

To no one's surprise, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)--the body which oversees the implementation of the 1993 treaty banning the possession and use of chemical weapons (CW)--last week agreed to delay the deadline for Russia to begin destroying its large stockpile... MORE

On May 18, Crimean Tatars held mass rallies to commemorate the 56th anniversary of their deportation to Central Asia in 1944, when Stalin indiscriminately accused them of collaboration with the Nazis. Since the late 1980s, when Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to their homeland,... MORE

The main event of the past week was undoubtedly President Vladimir Putin's three legislative initiatives aimed at reforming Russia's federal relations. Putin outlined the measures in an address on national television on May 17. They include: (1) changing the way in which the members of... MORE