A shouting match yesterday between the Communist parliamentary majority leader and a student protest leader encapsulates Moldova's recent history, current situation and, unfortunately for the country, its near-term political outlook: "You won't change us any more than we can change you," the student leader concluded... MORE

Mixed messages in news reports have left it unclear this week just how much was--or was not--accomplished during talks U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and senior Russian officials held in Moscow on February 18-19. The two days of talks clearly appear to have highlighted... MORE

Tensions between the Russian authorities and the biweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta ratcheted up yet again yesterday, when a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB) accused the paper of using trips made by its Chechnya correspondent, Anna Politkovskaya, "for resolving its financial problems and differences... MORE

Top officials of the Interior Ministry said today that they know who killed Galina Starovoitova, the State Duma deputy murdered in November 1998, and Vladislav Listiev, the well-known television journalist who was murdered in March 1995. Yuri Korolev, deputy head of the Interior Ministry's Main... MORE

The unexpected postponement of a visit to Moscow by Iran's foreign minister yesterday put relations between Russia and Iran back in the headlines and raised questions as to whether the Kremlin's longtime support for Tehran may be wavering. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi had been... MORE

Chechnya's civilian and military administrations may be merged--if, that is, Viktor Kazantsev, President Vladimir Putin's representative in the Southern federal district, gets his way. The Security Council, the powerful Kremlin advisory body, will at the end of February consider proposals made by Kazantsev for "modernizing"... MORE

Yury Shchekochikhin, the State Duma deputy and deputy editor of the biweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has been put under protective guard along with his family after receiving threats connected to an article by him that appeared in the paper's February 18 edition. In that article,... MORE

On February 19, Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement on the current political crisis in Moldova. The ministry acted two days after President Vladimir Putin had discussed the situation with his Moldovan Communist counterpart Vladimir Voronin by telephone, according to Chisinau's official announcement of... MORE

Pope John Paul II last week announced his intention to create a new ecclesiastical province on the territory of the Russian Federation consisting of four Roman Catholic dioceses. It is to be headed by Metropolitan Tadeush Kondrusevich, who has until now coordinated the activities of... MORE

Nizhny Novgorod Oblast has become the source of new initiatives aimed at regulating the activities of media and, in the view of independent observers, of limiting press freedom. Deputies to its legislative assembly have called on the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian... MORE