Russian and Iraqi diplomats yesterday denied reports that Russian oil companies may be violating UN sanctions by moving to fulfill oil development contracts signed earlier with authorities in Baghdad. Speaking to reporters yesterday at the UN in New York, Russian UN ambassador Sergei Lavrov said... MORE

News agencies reported yesterday that Russian security agents had searched the Moscow apartment of Joshua Handler, an American Ph.D. student from Princeton University doing research work on Russian nuclear waste storage facilities. The agents reportedly confiscated notebooks and a computer belonging to Handler. Handler was... MORE

Russian media have disseminated a severely distorted version of an interview granted by Lieutenant-General William Odom, former director of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) last week. The distortions originated with Kremlin-controlled media, spread to some innocent Russian... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised yesterday to rebuild Russia's military power. "The government has undertaken to rebuild and strengthen the military might of the state to respond to new geopolitical realities, both external and internal threats," Putin told naval officers at a base in Vladivostok,... MORE

The three top figures in the Fatherland-All Russia coalition yesterday circulated an open letter to President Boris Yeltsin accusing the Kremlin administration of "open interference" in the parliamentary election campaign, which, they said, "contradicts the law and generally accepted democratic norms." The letter's signatories--former Prime... MORE

Gunmen bursting into the Armenian parliament yesterday assassinated Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchian and an as-yet-undetermined number of legislators and executive branch officials, wounding others and seizing scores as hostages inside the building. The terrorists struck during a question-and-answer session while most... MORE

Transparency International, the Berlin-based corruption monitoring group, has released its 1999 Corruption Perceptions Index. That index uses various polls of businessmen, experts and the general public, to rank countries according to their perceived degree of bribe-taking. Russia shared the eighty-second and eighty-third spots--out of ninety-nine... MORE

Despite a variety of other issues on his agenda during his visits to Spain, Italy and France this week, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov's trip did seem primarily devoted to defending Russia's military operations in Chechnya against mounting criticism. In his public statements at least, the... MORE

Federal forces in Chechnya are on the verge of completing a total blockade of the republic's capital. The plan represents a significant tactical difference between this campaign and that of 1994-96, and Chechen civilians seem to be paying the price for it. As of now,... MORE

If an op-ed published in today's Washington Post is any indication, then Moscow may soon be facing a new and unexpected critic of its effort to blunt international condemnation of Russia's bloody military campaign in Chechnya. The op-ed quotes UN Secretary General Kofi Annan underlining... MORE