Armenia's society may have become inured to high-profile assassinations covered up by the justice system. Even so, a political scandal is now simmering over the cover-up of a murder committed by presidential bodyguards on the night of September 24-25 in Yerevan's premier jazz club, within... MORE

On February 25, a Crimean district court canceled the registration of Crimean Speaker Leonid Hrach for the Crimean parliamentary elections, to be held on March 31, the same day as the Ukrainian elections. Hrach appealed. His appeal was turned down. Fearful of losing his fiefdom,... MORE

Officials from NATO and Russia, who met this week in Brussels under the auspices of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council, announced yesterday that they had made progress in talks aimed at forging a new, more cooperative relationship. The vagueness of the joint statement released at... MORE

Russia's embattled independent media won a rare battle yesterday, when the Press Ministry awarded a new media company led by Aleksei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Radio Ekho Moskvy, broadcasting licenses for two FM radio frequencies and a UHF television frequency in Moscow. The decision came just... MORE

As anticipated (see the Monitor, February 18) the United States and Georgia are taking the next logical step, after having announced that international terrorists are, after all, hiding in the Pankisi Gorge. That next step is to give Georgian forces the capability to operate in... MORE

Russian and Western news sources have described the recent demotion of Ilya Klebanov as part of a broader shakeup that has strengthened the authority of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Reduced in rank on February 18 from deputy prime minister to minister of Industry, Science and... MORE

President Vladimir Putin is set to chair a session of his advisory Security Council today devoted to the situation in Chechnya. The presidential press service was quoted as saying that the council would focus on rebuilding the republic's socioeconomic sphere and state and legal institutions,... MORE

Stanislav Ilyasov, head of Chechnya's pro-Moscow government, announced the start of a project to resettle in Djohar (Grozny), the Chechen capital, refugees living in a tent camp in the northern Chechen village of Znamenskoe. According to Ilyasov, four dormitories fitted with basics like beds and... MORE

The latest official statements in Moscow evidence its goal to control Moldova in all key respects: as military and political "guarantor" in Transdniester, as maker of governments in Chisinau, as dominant economic factor, and as arbiter of the country's language and cultural policies which constitute,... MORE

Last week, the Kremlin commission charged with delimiting areas of authority between the federal government and Russia's eighty-nine republics and regions suddenly reminded the world of its existence. Statements by its chairman, deputy head of the presidential administration Dmitry Kozak, warned Russia's regional leaders that... MORE