After a week in which recriminations flew between Washington and Moscow over a pair of trade disputes (see the Monitor, March 7), relations between the United States and Russia took another hit over the weekend when major U.S. news media published reports laying out some... MORE

On March 2, Russia's newest "party of power"--United Russia--held a string of founding conferences in regional capitals across Russia. United Russia has been formed by merging the pro-presidential Unity with Yury Luzhkov's Fatherland and Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiev's All-Russia movement. The purpose of holding simultaneous... MORE

Alfred Kokh's election to represent Leningrad Oblast in the Federation Council is to be challenged in the courts (Russian agencies, March 5). Kokh, chairman of the board of directors of the Montes Auri investment fund, is better known as the former head of Gazprom-Media, which... MORE

Two members of Liberal Russia, the political movement funded and co-chaired by the rebel tycoon Boris Berezovsky, tried yesterday (March 10) to bring into Russia copies of "Attack on Russia," the documentary film made by a French production company under Berezovsky's auspices alleging that the... MORE

The fact that Boris Berezovsky chose March 5 to hold his London press conference putting forwards his charges concerning alleged FSB involvement in the apartment building bombings was not accidental. The day marked the forty-ninth anniversary of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Other... MORE

Even as the anticommunist demonstrations in Chisinau are petering out, the authorities' disarray is rising to self-destructive levels. Unable--for now--to seize the political initiative internally, President Vladimir Voronin has gone on the counteroffensive in Moscow. That move seems a direct result of the encouragement Russian... MORE

Last week, Ukraine's parliament (Verkhovna Rada) saw an avalanche of grave accusations against President Kuchma and his top aides. On March 5, the lawmakers passed a request to the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) to examine whether Kuchma assisted former Premier Pavlo Lazarenko (who is awaiting... MORE

On the morning of March 6, Valery Malev, the director of Ukrspetseksport--the Ukrainian state arms trading company--was killed in a car accident in Poltava Region. Malev, a former minister for the machine-building and military-industrial complex, had served as Ukrspetseksport director since 1998. He had also... MORE

Yesterday, as the United Nations and Iraq held their first talks in more than a year, published reports have appeared recently suggesting that Russia and the United States may be narrowing their own differences on how best to deal with Baghdad. If that is indeed... MORE

Carla Del Ponte, Chief Prosecutor for the United Nations International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, met yesterday (March 7) in The Hague with Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov's emissary, Akhmed Zakaev. The Gazeta.ru website reported that the meeting between Del Ponte and Zakaev,... MORE