Should Russian forces undertake an operation against Georgia, Western governments would not be able to plead surprise (see the Monitor, October 5-6, 21, November 8, 12; The Fortnight in Review, October 22, November 19, December 3). As danger signals accumulate, continued Western silence--the Clinton administration's... MORE

At its summit held on December 10 in Helsinki, the European Union decided to begin negotiations with Latvia and Lithuania on their accession to the EU. On December 11, the European Council--the EU's executive authority, made up of the member countries' prime ministers--resolved to convene... MORE

Along with the legal cloud now hovering over the various Russian elections scheduled for December 19, there is also a growing sense that the country's various political confrontations could spin out of control before election day. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the number two candidate on... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin adroitly played upon such concerns in an interview published over the weekend by the Financial Times. In the wake of President Boris Yeltsin's feckless saber-rattling in Beijing on December 9, Putin was careful to play the role of statesman. The... MORE

The appeals collegium of Russia's Supreme Court has dealt a blow to St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, who is also the Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) coalition's number three candidate for the December 19 State Duma election. Over the weekend, on December 11, the collegium ruled illegal... MORE

Efforts to toughen the European Union's position toward Russia's war in Chechnya fizzled over the weekend as EU leaders stuck by and large to the policy they held going into the Helsinki summit meeting: that is, issuing statements criticizing Moscow for its Caucasus crackdown but... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced that the likelihood of Russian federal forces storming the Chechen capital of Djohar will depend on the behavior of both the Chechen fighters and the civilians there. Meanwhile, the Chechen side is claiming that federal troops are continuing to... MORE

Apart from military-strategic considerations, the effort to merge Belarus with Russia is being propelled by two convergent ideological streams: Soviet nostalgia and pan-Slavist or pan-Russian nationalism of Tsarist-era vintage. The former has some effect--albeit poorly quantified--on public opinion in both countries and has been widely... MORE

The Russian-Belarusan summit just held in Moscow bore out the earlier observation (see the Monitor, March 26, May 21, June 24, October 7). that the two countries' military "integration" is advancing faster than their economic, political and institutional integration. The reasons are, first, Moscow's own... MORE

Despite the International Monetary Fund's decision to withhold yet again the second US$640 million tranche of its US$4.5 billion loan package to Russia, many analysts were of one mind this week that Russia can "survive," given the current high prices for oil and the government's... MORE