On April 16, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma won--hands down--his nationwide plebiscite to curtail the authority and size of the legislature and to boost his own power. Almost 82 percent of the respondents said yes to a bicameral legislature. Some 85 percent endorsed a presidential authority... MORE

International reaction to Ukraine's recent constitutional referendum was mixed. U.S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who visited Kyiv on April 14, had no reservations about it. Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin, who visited on April 18, hailed its results. At the same time, Europe's moral authority,... MORE

The Georgian Central Electoral Commission's final official returns show that Eduard Shevardnadze was re-elected president on April 9 with 79.8 percent of the votes cast, to 16.7 percent of his leftist challenger Jumber Patiashvili. The voter turnout was 76 percent (Sakartvelos Republikas, April 20). On... MORE

Comments by a top Russian general yesterday suggested that recent overtures from Moscow aimed at improving ties with the West may, in fact, not enjoy the enthusiastic backing of all elites in the Russian capital. Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, a notorious hardliner who heads the... MORE

Congressman Jim Leach, who heads the House of Representatives' Banking and Financial Services Committee, is in Moscow with a group of fellow U.S. legislators for a series of meetings on the issue of money laundering. The trip was made in connection with hearings called by... MORE

A Russian newspaper wrote today that the arrival of the U.S. congressional delegation headed by Congressman Jim Leach is a sign that Leach, who, in the paper's view, tried to use the Bank of New York (BONY) money laundering scandal to discredit Russia, is now... MORE

Presidents Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan and Imomali Rahmonov of Tajikistan, accompanied by their respective foreign affairs ministers and Security Council secretaries, conferred on April 20-21 in Tashkent on regional security problems. The meeting was held without Russian... MORE

Tajikistan's March parliamentary elections, while hardly letter-perfect, marked a major step in political reconciliation for a country still shell-shocked from the civil war which ended in 1997. Although leaders of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) are unhappy about the small number of parliamentary seats they... MORE

After years of procrastination and petulance the Russian parliament has at last voted to ratify the 1992 START II Treaty. Many of the legislators must now be asking themselves why they took so long, because their long-delayed action looks like a winner for Russia in... MORE

Just a week before a scheduled meeting between Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a Russian patrol boat this weekend fired upon and then seized a Japanese fishing vessel. The April 21 incident also came just twenty-four hours before an informal... MORE