The comments of the authorities concerning what happened to Andrei Babitsky have strengthened suspicions that his supposed exchange for Russian POWs was fake, and that he is in fact still in the Russian special services' custody, was turned over to professional Chechen kidnappers or is... MORE

Not surprisingly, the disappearance of Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky following his purported February 3 exchange for Russian POWs in Chechnya has given rise to a host of theories. According to one, Babitsky was simply killed or made to disappear in order to prevent him... MORE

As anticipated on the morrow of the Istanbul summit (see the Monitor, December 6, 1999), Moscow and Transdniester soon moved to challenge the decisions made by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) at that summit with respect to Moldova. The OSCE required... MORE

The leadership of the federal forces in Chechnya has officially announced that the Chechen capital of Djohar is in Russian hands, and that the Chechen rebel forces have been largely driven out of the breakaway republic's lowlands (NTV, February 6). This federal declaration of victory... MORE

Reports published in the Russian press last week suggested that the Kremlin is launching a major push to increase arms export revenues for the year 2000. The same reports also listed final figures for 1999 arms sales which were significantly higher than those that had... MORE

Pavel Borodin is an empire builder in more than one sense. As Kremlin property manager during Boris Yeltsin's presidency, Borodin created a multibillion-dollar business empire, heavily tainted by corruption charges in Russia and abroad (see the Monitor, January 11, 28). Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin,... MORE

The Belarusan parliament has completed the formality of approving the draft budget for 2000 presented by the government of Prime Minister Syarhey Linh and endorsed by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. This budget is based on highly optimistic assumptions about GDP growth and inflation for this year... MORE

On February 4, the military court of the Almaty garrison rendered its verdict in the case of the illegal sale of forty MiG-21 fighter planes to North Korea. The incident last year had caused an international scandal with reverberations in the United States, South Korea,... MORE

In 1998, Kazakh GDP fell 2.5 percent despite rising GDP in the first half of the year. The aftereffects of the Russian financial crisis and a terrible harvest derailed the modest economic recovery that began in 1996. In 1999, after a poor first half, GDP... MORE

Barely a day after U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's departure from Moscow, already troubled Russian-U.S. relations appeared to take a fresh hit yesterday following the seizure of a Russian oil tanker by a U.S.-led naval interception force in the Persian Gulf. The seizure prompted... MORE