Russian observers have been reacting cautiously to Vladimir Putin's apparent reversal of fortune. Two days ago, after a week or more of rumors that he would be fired, the prime minister received a strong re-endorsement from President Boris. The caution of the observers is understandable,... MORE

The Russian wrangle with Britain had a seemingly more innocuous beginning, but appears also to have assumed increasing importance in Moscow's eyes. The row began following a November 12 incident in which four journalists from the Russian television stations ORT and NTV were roughed up--two... MORE

Amid the broader tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow's crackdown in Chechnya, relations between Moscow and both France and Britain have become especially strained in recent days. The diplomatic face-off between Moscow and Paris has been driven primarily by the appearance in France... MORE

Symonenko went into the runoff with the support of a leftist and Russian-oriented bloc whose parties and leaders had polled, between them, almost 50 percent of the total vote cast on October 31 in the first round of the election. The bloc included the Socialist... MORE

According to preliminary returns, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma won reelection to a second five-year term with a fairly comfortable advance over Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko in yesterday's runoff. Symonenko fought the runoff as the standard bearer of an alliance of left-socialist and pro-Russian political... MORE

The U.S. steel industries and its protectors in Washington need not concern themselves with too many details regarding Russian steel imports. This is because Russia is not a WTO member: It is instead classified as a "nonmarket economy," and antidumping cases initiated by WTO countries... MORE

According to a preliminary finding issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on November 10, Russian steel companies once again face prospects of prohibitive sanctions on their exports to the U.S. market. This ruling, which sanctions the argument that Russian steel is "dumped" on the... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may have helped induce Boris Yeltsin's re-endorsement of him by playing the Kremlin against its main opponent--the Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) coalition headed by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Indeed, Putin has maintained the image of standing... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin--the subject of recent rumors that he may be fired--received a ringing re-endorsement yesterday from President Boris Yeltsin. Prior to a meeting between the two men at Yeltsin's Gorky-9 residence outside Moscow, Yeltsin said that he continues to support Putin as his... MORE

On November 12 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stepped up his own condemnations of Moscow's military operations in the Caucasus. A spokesman for Annan, Fred Eckhard, told reporters that the UN secretary general is "disturbed to see that the scope of the [Russian] military offensive... MORE