The Russian government's open blessing contributed significantly to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's electoral victory over the Red opposition. That blessing enabled Kuchma to make deep inroads into Ukraine's large ethnic Russian or russified electorate and hold the Russian-oriented communists to a draw in some of... MORE

On the other hand, it is possible that ousting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is simply one of the Kremlin inner circle's contingency plans aimed at ensuring the protection of their power and perks after next year's presidential election. Another possible contingency plan is what some... MORE

While President Boris Yeltsin was preparing for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (0SCE) summit in Istanbul and insisting that he would not bow to Western pressure over Chechnya, Boris Berezovsky, the tycoon and Kremlin insider, came out with his own seven-point peace... MORE

With President Boris Yeltsin set to travel today to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Istanbul, Russia continued its military campaign in Chechnya, despite the likelihood that Western leaders will press the Russian head of state for a cessation of... MORE

Defense Minister Igor Sergeev's and General Staff chief Anatoly Kvashnin's latest remarks suggest that the Russian military establishment is anxious to maintain the loud, jingoist atmosphere which pervades Russian political discourse today. This atmosphere, after all, has won the Defense Ministry the unqualified support of... MORE

Russian sources over the past two days appear at last to have clarified who will lead the Russian delegation to this week's Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Istanbul. On November 15 the Kremlin announced that President Boris Yeltsin would indeed... MORE

A host of Russian government officials and leading political figures have used the runup to the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as an opportunity to rebuff Western criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya and to sound off over Moscow's... MORE

Kuchma's no-holds-barred anticommunist strategy was the main but not the sole factor in preventing a Red revanche. In the first round of the election, the incumbent president had only polled some 36 percent of the vote, at least 12 percentage points below the total leftist... MORE

With almost the entire vote counted, President Leonid Kuchma has outpolled Communist leader Petro Symonenko by a margin of almost 19 percentage points--approximately 56.5 to 37.5--in Ukraine's presidential election runoff on November 14. The defeat of the Communists and allied Red parties has turned out... MORE

Another possible explanation for President Boris Yeltsin's re-endorsement of Vladimir Putin--one far more conspiratorial and much harder to substantiate--is that while Yeltsin has apparently been extremely jealous of popular prime ministers in the past, he and/or his inner circle are hatching plans to give him... MORE