Following the collapse of the minority government of Vilis Kristopans (see the Monitor, July 8), Latvia's three largest parties have agreed in principle to form a coalition government of conservative orientation. The coalition partners are the People's Party (24 parliamentary seats) and Fatherland and Freedom... MORE

Vaira Vike-Freiberga was sworn in as President of Latvia on July 8, replacing Guntis Ulmanis, whose second term of office expired on that date. Each of these presidents in his or her way symbolizes the legal and cultural continuity of Latvia through the vicissitudes of... MORE

Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo is on an official visit to the North Caucasus region, where he met yesterday with Stavropol Governor Aleksandr Chernogorov and Kabardino-Balkaria President Valery Kokov, and with Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev and North Ossetian President Aleksandr Dzasokhov. The Russian interior minister... MORE

One of Primakov's key opponents, the tycoon Boris Berezovsky, has predicted that a Primakov-Luzhkov alliance would be short-lived, citing the irreconcilable nature of what he described as Luzhkov's "emotional" populism and Primakov's "cold-blooded" calculating approach to politics. In an extensive interview published today, Berezovsky also... MORE

Amid the unsuccessful efforts to raise new space station funding, the Russian government reached several decisions on Mir. On May 21 Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed an instruction to the government which granted Energia permission to keep Mir aloft so long as the authorities were... MORE

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov revealed yesterday that he met over the weekend with former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Luzhkov's comments came just on the heels of the news that the political council of his political movement Fatherland (Otechestvo) had decided to invite Primakov to head... MORE

The Russian space establishment's long, desperate and at times even comic efforts to keep the Mir station aloft have produced little in the way of new funding which might make that dream a reality. Moreover, with the crash of a Russian Proton rocket during a... MORE

Russia uses Kazakhstan's Baikonur space center for both civilian and military rocket launches in accordance with two intergovernmental agreements signed in 1994 for a twenty-year period. The agreements require Russia to pay US$115 million in annual rent and to prenotify Kazakhstan of each launch. Moscow... MORE

A Russian Proton-K booster rocket, carrying a Raduga-1 military intelligence satellite, went off trajectory and exploded on July 6, minutes after liftoff from Kazakhstan's Baikonur space center. Debris from the rocket and its highly toxic fuel--containing the dangerous heptyl compound--were strewn over a semidesert area... MORE

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has apparently accelerated his attempts to woo former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov into a political alliance. A source in Fatherland (Otechestvo), the political movement founded by Luzhkov, told the Interfax news agency yesterday that the movement's political council had invited Primakov... MORE