In a sign that Vladimir Putin's presidential election victory may herald a reordering of sorts in Russia's foreign policy priorities, news reports announced yesterday that the Russian leader will travel next week to London for talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary... MORE

Some members of Russia's ever-fractured democratic movement are making yet another attempt to put together a broad democratic coalition. This move, if successful, could provoke an open split within the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS), the coalition led by former Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko which... MORE

In their April 10 appeal for a broad democratic coalition, Konstantin Titov, Marina Salye, Yuri Chernichenko and Lev Ponomarev called on Russia's democratic organizations to work out a "unified position" in relation to the executive branch. This is noteworthy, given that Titov, Salye and Ponomarev... MORE

On April 8, Russia's embassy in Tallinn hosted a general meeting of "representatives of the Russian-speaking population" of Estonia. Leaders of political, economic, cultural and other types of groups attended the meeting at the invitation of Ambassador Aleksei Glukhov to plan the creation of an... MORE

A political controversy began to brew in Germany over the weekend following media reports that the German government may have provided Moscow with intelligence which aided Russian military operations against Chechen rebels. According to one German newspaper report on April 7, German foreign intelligence service... MORE

Several leading members of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament of regional leaders, have come out in favor of giving former President Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's first and last president, life-long membership in the body. Yegor Stroev, the... MORE

President-elect Vladimir Putin has indicated that he sees reform of fiscal relations as a means of strengthening the center's control over Russia's wayward regions. This will be a difficult exercise with an uncertain outcome. Some of the pitfalls are outlined in the latest survey published... MORE

Eduard Shevardnadze is ensured of winning another five-year term of office in the presidential election held on April 9. But Shevardnadze and his team need a high voter turnout and a substantial margin of victory over the main challenger, Jumber Patiashvili, who banks on Soviet... MORE

While the International Monetary Fund and the Russian government have committed themselves to future cooperation and a constructive relationship, acting IMF Director Stanley Fischer's visit to Moscow this week did not yield concrete promises of aid. The Russian side, for its part, seems resigned to... MORE

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) took an unexpected and politically gutsy step yesterday when it voted for an immediate withdrawal of Russia's voting rights in the assembly and began a process by which Moscow could see its membership in Europe's premier human rights... MORE