President Vladimir Putin's reform of the upper house of the Russian parliament culminated on January 30 with the adoption of a new organizational structure and the election of a new set of parliamentary leaders. The powerful regional governors who, in the last years of Boris... MORE

Aleksandr Lebed, governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, one of the largest regions in the Russian Far East, has carried out a swinging personnel shakeup. On January 28, Lebed, the former army general who came third in Russia's 1996 presidential race, fired his twelve deputies and announced... MORE

On January 31, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that leaves Georgia fully dependent on Russia for a solution to the Abkhazia problem. The resolution nevertheless makes it possible for President Eduard Shevardnadze to shelve, without excessive loss of face, his recent appeals for... MORE

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov yesterday accused Western governments of exhibiting a "double standard" regarding "separatism, religious extremism and fanaticism" in meeting with representatives of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov while conducting a war against international terrorism. Ivanov made his remarks at an international security... MORE

Moscow had hoped that the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington would undermine support in the West for the Chechen rebels. And, indeed, not long after the September 11 attacks the U.S. administration and other Western governments called on the rebels to break any... MORE

Central Asia made its debut at NATO's most prestigious public forum, the annual Conference on Security Policy, which was held in Munich on February 2-3. During the forum, the presentations made by the Kyrgyz and Tajik foreign affairs ministers reflected the unprecedented latitude in strategic... MORE

The likelihood is dimming that Yulia Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian gas trader turned ardent presidential oppositionist, will make it through the March 31 elections and win a seat in Ukraine's new parliament (Verkhovna Rada). January was not a good month for her: Her newspaper was expelled... MORE

Consultations between Russia and the United States held this week in Washington produced mixed signals, with strategic arms reduction talks between the two sides remaining deadlocked while parallel consultations on a draft statement of political cooperation and friendship seeming to move forward. In Moscow, meanwhile,... MORE

Novye Izvestia, which is part of the media empire controlled by the dissident oligarch Boris Berezovsky, reported today that the country's Interior Ministry is drawing up a number of amendments to Russia's security law that would put significant limitations on citizens' access to the Internet.... MORE

In a sign that the Russian authorities may soon issue an international warrant for the arrest of Boris Berezovsky, the Prosecutor General's Office has reportedly ordered the Federal Security Service (FSB) to supply it with evidence that the tycoon and his long-time associate, Badri Patarkatsishvili,... MORE