Amid the recriminations between Russia and the West over Moscow's war in Chechnya, a visit by Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev to Yugoslavia--and to Kosovo--on December 23-24 received relatively little attention in the West. The visit was a noteworthy one, however, and not only because... MORE

The question of Acting President Vladimir Putin's democratic credentials or lack thereof continues to be discussed in somewhat nervous tones. In an interview published today, Yevgenia Albats, veteran journalist and author of a book on the Soviet KGB, asked Anatoly Chubais, head of United Energy... MORE

Acting President Vladimir Putin reshuffled the Kremlin administration yesterday, appointing two career diplomats, Aleksei Gromov and Vladimir Rakhmanin, as presidential press secretary and chief of protocol, respectively. He also appointed Igor Shchegolev as the head of the presidential press service. Shchegolev had been in charge... MORE

Moldova has narrowly averted making history as the first ex-Soviet country to hand its government back to the Communist Party (see the Monitor, December 3, 1999). Yet the new nonpartisan cabinet of ministers under Dumitru Braghis, which took office on December 22 with a vaguely... MORE

Moscow seems intent on taking its new-found fiscal prowess to new heights this year. The 2000 budget assumes that the share of GDP collected as federal revenues will grow to 14.9 percent, while spending as a share of GDP is to remain flat, at 16.0... MORE

The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, approved the 2000 federal government budget on December 22 (Reuters, December 22). This comes on the heels of Russia's exceptionally good budgetary performance in 1999, when for the first time virtually all of Moscow's key fiscal... MORE

Boris Yeltsin's December 31 resignation announcement rocked governments around the world, but was apparently a particular shock for the government of Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. Indeed, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials indicated after Yeltsin's announcement that they had been assured by Russian officials only days... MORE

According to Russia's constitution, a new presidential election must be held within three months of the day Boris Yeltsin resigned from that post--December 31, 1999. But while Russian media reported over the holiday weekend that it has been tentatively scheduled for March 26, Marat Valgai,... MORE

Russia's embassy in Beirut was the apparent target of an attack launched yesterday to protest Moscow's ongoing war against Islamic rebels in Chechnya. News reports differed as to just how many assailants were involved in the attack, which left one policeman dead and several policemen... MORE

Those Cold War-style tensions were in evidence during a three-day visit to Moscow by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott which ended on December 23. The visit suggested that neither the election of a new Russian parliament nor the dawning of a new millennium... MORE