Turkmenistan has officially requested that the Operational Group of Russian Border Troops (OGRT) withdraw from the country by November 20. A relict of Soviet border troops, the OGRT owed its legal status to a treaty signed by Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Saparmurat Niazov... MORE

The commotion around the terrorist conspiracy just unveiled in Georgia (see the Monitor, May 24-25) has obscured a potentially significant political event--the release of former Defense Minister Tengiz Kitovani from prison. Kitovani, 60, served four years of an eight-year sentence for having organized an unlawful... MORE

Speculations about Oleksandr Tkachenko, speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, possibly participating in the run-up to the October elections are gaining solid ground. Tkachenko's Peasant Party has recently visibly changed its preferences. Its chairman, Serhy Dovhan, has switched from backing communist leader Petro Symonenko to public... MORE

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Leonid Drachevsky held talks with the Moldovan leaders in Chisinau on May 24 and returned to Moscow yesterday as CIS Affairs minister. Appointed yesterday by President Boris Yeltsin to serve in this capacity in the reshuffled Russian cabinet, Drachevsky is one... MORE

In the wake of Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin's visit to Karachaevo-Cherkessia on May 25, the republic's government has resigned. The republic will be led by a provisional government headed by Igor Ivanov, speaker of the regional Duma, until the republic's Supreme Court and Central Election... MORE

Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh completed a two-day visit to Moscow yesterday during which the Balkans crisis appeared to dominate discussions. Russian reports of the visit observed at length what they said were the common views of the crisis held by Moscow and New Delhi.... MORE

Ivanov, for his part, said yesterday that NATO-Russian relations are currently in a deep freeze--warning that ties between the two sides will never return to what they were before the launching of NATO's air campaign. Ivanov tied that observation to recent moves by the Russian... MORE

Pessimism continued to prevail in Moscow yesterday as Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters that negotiators have failed to make progress in their efforts to broker a peace settlement in the Balkans. "Very active and intensive consultations are underway and unfortunately it is too... MORE

The decision to name former Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov as a second first deputy prime minister seems to have been a compromise worked out by President Boris Yeltsin. Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin had been pushing for State Duma budget committee chief Aleksandr Zhukov to serve... MORE

Despite Mikhail Zadornov's appointment as a second first deputy prime minister, Nikolai Aksenenko does not appear to be ready to yield total control over macroeconomic policy to him. In an interview yesterday, Aksenenko said that Zadornov, an economist, would be in charge of macroeconomic policy,... MORE