For those Westerners who have an image of the Baltic states as smaller versions of Scandinavian countries, recent data on new car sales provide a reality check. Through October of this year, of the 6,044 new cars registered in Latvia, Russia's AvtoVAZ had the largest... MORE

In the wake of the Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe, Baltic leaders are concerned by the twin processes which overshadowed the summit: Russia's war in the Caucasus and the OSCE's inability to deal with the problem. According to... MORE

The Baltic states set a standard of intellectual and political integrity in assessing Russia's war in Chechnya during the recent Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Estonian President Lennart Meri demonstratively stayed away from the summit. He explained in... MORE

Russian forces have been carrying out a massive bombardment on Djohar, the Chechen capital, using ground-launched rockets and aviation. According to eyewitnesses, the current attack is the most massive to date, even when compared with those carried out during the 1994-1996 military campaign. The city... MORE

The Kremlin's battle against Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's mayor and one of the leaders of the Fatherland-All Russia election coalition, appears to be intensifying. Russian Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov held a press conference yesterday in the Russian capital, during which he charged the Moscow branch... MORE

Russian and Chinese diplomats met in Moscow on November 26 for a second round of consultations devoted to key international security issues, including questions related to "strategic stability, disarmament and arms control." But both sides made clear afterward that the real focus of the talks... MORE

Even less information was available yesterday about the arrest in Moscow of Cheri Leberknight, who serves as the second secretary in the U.S. Embassy's political section. In comments made on Russian television, a spokesman for the FSB said that a U.S. diplomat had been caught... MORE

Against a background of mounting tensions over Russia's war in Chechnya, Moscow's opposition to U.S. efforts to develop a national missile defense system and a host of other security issues, Russia and the United States this week have found yet another theater in which to... MORE

After Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's victory in the November 14 election, and the consequent weakening of the Red forces in parliament, Oleksandr Tkachenko's position as speaker of the parliament is growing increasingly unstable. If Kuchma achieved his goal of creating a center-right majority in the... MORE

On November 23, Dmytro Dvorkis, mayor of Vinnytsya, the capital of Ukraine's central region, was attacked in his Jeep in the city center. Sprayed with bullets from a Kalashnikov gun, the mayor was wounded, though not critically, in the neck and chest, his driver was... MORE