On January 22, Russia's Constitutional Court began its examination of legislation that gives the Russian president the power to remove a regional governor from office and to dissolve a regional legislature (Russian agencies, January 22). The legislation in question is part of a controversial package... MORE

On January 27, the incumbent president of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alaniya, Aleksandr Dzasokhov, won a second term in office (Russian agencies, January 28). None of the six other presidential hopefuls proved a serious opponent. Dzasokhov's only real rival, Sergei Khetagurov, head of North Ossetia's... MORE

Georgia's Internal Affairs and State Security Ministries are conducting a carefully calibrated operation to restore order in the Pankisi Gorge, the scene in the last two years of rampant criminal activities that ultimately spilled over into the rest of Georgia. The armed criminal groups, mostly... MORE

UN policy toward Iraq--an issue that had sharply divided Moscow and Washington prior to the events of September 11--reemerged as a point of possible contention with a three-day visit to Moscow last week by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz. Although few details of Aziz's... MORE

Moscow has attempted in recent years to use its status as Baghdad's primary supporter in order to carve out a mediating role for itself in the often tense deliberations between Iraq and the UN. In the broadest terms, Russian diplomats have tried to convince the... MORE

Contradictory claims have followed yesterday's crash of a Russian military helicopter in Chechnya, which killed all fourteen people on board, including a deputy interior minister. An Mi-8 helicopter belonging to the Interior Ministry exploded and crashed near the village of Shelkovskaya, northwest of Djohar (Grozny),... MORE

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman on Chechnya, warned today that Radio Liberty, which today began broadcasting in several North Caucasian languages, including Chechen, could lose its Russian broadcasting license. In an interview with the GaZeTa web newspaper, Yastrzhembsky accused the radio station, which is... MORE

On January 27, Uzbekistan's voters duly turned out and answered yes to both questions in a referendum initiated by President Islam Karimov. The referendum has rubber-stamped two constitutional amendments. The first extends the presidential term of office from five years to seven--meaning, for Karimov, that... MORE

The ongoing battle between the Russian authorities and Boris Berezovsky ratcheted up sharply late yesterday. Nikolai Patrushev, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), announced that his agency has documentary evidence that the erstwhile Kremlin insider, who went into self-imposed exile in 2000 after denouncing... MORE

The U.S. newspaper Newsday reported this week that it had come into possession of a videocassette showing the links between the Arab/Chechen rebel leader Khattab and Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network. The videocassette--which came from a former al-Qaida residence in Kabul, Afghanistan,... MORE