Karabakh authorities and the Armenian state seem unprepared politically, legally or conceptually to deal with the latest act of internal terrorism--the March 22 assassination attempt on Karabakh's president Arkady Gukasian (see the Monitor, March 24). Interviewed on March 27 on Armenian National Television, Karabakh prime... MORE

World leaders lined up yesterday to convey their congratulations to newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin. Optimism about the election results, however, was tempered by enduring concerns over Russia's war in Chechnya and the uncertainty of Putin's domestic and foreign policy agenda. On the positive... MORE

While the official final tallies for Sunday's presidential election are not yet in, the unofficial results are revealing some interesting patterns. One is the fact that Putin, who appears to have won with around 52 percent of the vote, made great inroads into regions traditionally... MORE

Yesterday, the heads of the administration in Chechnya and the Russian military commanders there jointly called on President-elect Vladimir Putin to bring the region under direct presidential rule. Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Koshman, the Russian government's representative in Chechnya, said he believed that the republic... MORE

Lithuania's local election returns, issued on March 26, document a strong leftward swing of the political pendulum. These returns, along with public opinion surveys, presage another jolt toward the left in this year's parliamentary elections, of which the local elections are seen as the dress... MORE

Troops of the OMON (special-purpose internal units) brutally dispersed the Belarusan opposition's Freedom Day mass rally in downtown Minsk on March 25. An unprecedented concentration of up to 2,000 police, backed by armored personnel carriers, confronted some 7,000 demonstrators, hundreds of whom were beaten and... MORE

The political composition of the Kyrgyz parliament is still unclear after the March 12 election runoff, in which eighty-one out of ninety legislative seats were at stake in the single-mandate electoral districts. Only twenty-four seats--including fifteen on party slates--had been adjudicated in the first round... MORE

Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin has been elected the country's head of state. According to the results released by the Central Election Commission (CEC) at 10 AM today, Moscow time, based on a tabulation of 94.27 percent of all votes cast, Putin had won a... MORE

Gennady Zyuganov's performance, while demonstrating the party's organizational skills as well as some ongoing popular support for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), also and perhaps more importantly showed that backing for the KPRF--or, perhaps, for Zyuganov personally--is eroding in its traditional strongholds.... MORE

The real losers in yesterday's vote were those within the democratic part of Russia's electorate who opposed Vladimir Putin, regarding him as a potential threat to civil liberties and democratic norms. Yavlinsky, for example, stressed in the final days of his campaign that he saw... MORE