Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu, chairman of the Belarusan Writers' Union--a highly prestigious office in the post-Soviet countries--has requested political asylum in Poland, according to reports in Minsk's official and opposition press yesterday. While on a private visit to the neighboring country, Nyaklyaeu notified the Polish authorities that... MORE

In an interview for the current issue of Germany's news magazine "Der Spiegel" during the G-7 summit in Cologne, Russian President Boris Yeltsin portrays the unification of Russia and Belarus as a natural process well underway. Yeltsin cites the "community of historic fate," "common strategic... MORE

Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the first female president of a Central or East European country, has by and large emphasized continuity in Latvia's policies following her election last week (see the Monitor, June 18). Her initial statements, however, also contain some new emphases and nuances which reflect... MORE

Defense Minister Girts Kristovskis and other officials of that ministry announced yesterday a plan to achieve compatibility of Latvia's armed forces with those of NATO countries. The plan includes specific goals to be attained in stages from 1999 to 2003. Latvia will: (1) prepare staff... MORE

One of Luzhkov's strongest critics of late, former Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko, changed tack yesterday, aiming his criticism not at Luzhkov, but at Yeltsin. Speaking to a forum of international Russian-language press, Kirienko called on Yeltsin to step down voluntarily this October, prior to the... MORE

Some Russian observers are saying that the June 19 incident in which the Moscow regional military authorities refused to give Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov permission to fly by helicopter over neighboring Moscow oblast (to see how the growing season is going) marked a significant escalation... MORE

A worrisome aspect of the escalation of tensions around Chechnya is that some Cossack leaders in Stavropol are promising to take matters into their own hands. Vladimir Shevtsov, ataman of the Tersk Cossacks, was quoted as saying that Cossacks may start forming their own self-defense... MORE

The situation in the North Caucasus has reached what is perhaps its greatest point of tension since the war in Chechnya ended in 1996. Yesterday, Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin met with top officials from the "power ministries"--including Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo, Foreign Intelligence Service chief... MORE

Tensions between Russia and the West, moreover, were hardly absent during the G-7 summit. Both Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin--who stood in for the Russian president during the first two days of the summit--and Yeltsin himself pushed for including Serbia in a Western-backed plan to rebuild... MORE

With Russian-American relations so severely strained during the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, it came as a surprise to many that Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin could so quickly agree at their recent meeting in Cologne to move forward on some very contentious nuclear... MORE