UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wound up a two-day visit to Moscow yesterday during which the Kosovo peace settlement dominated talks with the Russian leadership. Annan met during his stay with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and, yesterday, with President Boris Yeltsin.... MORE

The Russian government yesterday denied a Western news report alleging that some sixty Russian volunteers had been part of the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo. The New York daily Newsday reported earlier this week that the sixty Russians had been organized into a single... MORE

Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, meanwhile, took the increasingly standard route in Moscow of attributing Western reports critical of Russian behavior in the Balkans to some sort of Western disinformation campaign. The Russian general has long been a leading critic of NATO and reportedly helped mastermind... MORE

Japan has granted 470 million yen (some US$3.8 million) in support of Uzbekistan's program to increase food production. Tashkent had requested the grant-in-aid in order to purchase Japanese agricultural machinery so as to increase Uzbekistan's output of rice and wheat. Uzbekistan aims for self-sufficiency in... MORE

Georgia's Foreign and Defense Ministries have made public additional, conclusive information regarding the June 19 violation of the country's airspace by Russian MiG-29 airplanes (see the Monitor, June 21). The four jets took off from the Millerovo airfield in the Rostov region, Russia, overflew Georgia... MORE

In its quest for alternative sources of oil, in order to reduce its dependence on Russia, the Ukrainian government has entered into negotiations with Kazakhstan. Prime Minister Valery Pustovoytenko and Industrial Policy Minister Vasyl Hureyev have just held talks on the subject in Kyiv with... MORE

Zapad [West]-99," the largest strategic command-staff exercise conducted since 1985 by Soviet or Russian forces, is underway in western and northwestern Russia from June 21-26 under the overall command of Russia's Defense Minister Igor Sergeev. The Belarusan military participates in the exercise under bilateral military... MORE

Relations between Russia and Japan teetered toward a breakdown this week, despite an unexpected meeting in Cologne between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. The meeting was a brief one--a ten-minute tete-a-tete which occurred on the sidelines of the Group of... MORE

Just a day after Russia's Supreme Court gave the Main Military Prosecutor's office a green light to continue its criminal investigation of suspended Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov (see the Monitor, June 23), Skuratov yesterday canceled his plans to visit Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss... MORE

Russian lawmakers played their usual constructive role yesterday in deliberations devoted to Moscow's policy toward the Balkans. The State Duma's Anti-NATO commission, a grouping which brings together hardline opponents of NATO from a number of parliamentary factions, adopted a statement accusing NATO of deliberately organizing... MORE