State Minister (equivalent to prime minister) Vazha Lortkipanidze declared on May 21 that "the United States is our most important partner. To state this is simply to state a fact." Lortkipanidze cited as supportive evidence that Washington has for the past few years granted to... MORE

In the early hours of May 23 a bomb exploded at the office of the Crimean Speaker and leader of the Crimean branch of the Ukrainian Communist Party Leonid Hrach in the Crimean capital of Simferopol. There were no casualties, but the building and windows... MORE

The May 16 runoff election for the head of the Karachaevo-Cherkessia republic has, in effect, been ruined. No official results have yet been announced, but unofficial ones apparently give the win to Vladimir Semenov, former head of Russia's ground forces. The fourteen members of Russia's... MORE

One of the greatest fears spawned by the implosion of the Soviet Union is that Russian nuclear weapons, or the fissile material necessary to build them, might fall into the wrong hands. While the American government has provided a considerable amount of money and technical... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who did meet with Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou and UN envoy Carl Bildt on May 22, also made it clear to reporters that important differences between Russia and the West remain. He suggested that the most significant of these... MORE

In a sidebar to the weekend's diplomatic developments, official Moscow found itself scrambling to explain how a Russian national apparently came to be among a group of Serb soldiers killed in Kosovo last week. Kosovo rebels claimed on May 20 to have killed some thirty-three... MORE

Following a week of intense negotiations, frustration appeared to reign in Moscow over the weekend that, according to several Russian officials, no significant progress in the effort to broker a Kosovo peaceful settlement had been made. The chairman of the Russian Duma's International Affairs Committee,... MORE

Whether Boris Berezovsky's reported power play is being thwarted remains to be seen. It is possible, however, that Yeltsin is trying to return to his past practice of setting up a system of checks and balances by playing the powerful clans against one another. As... MORE

Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin was set to meet in Sochi today with President Boris Yeltsin and discuss the line-up of the new cabinet. Yeltsin flew to the Black Sea resort at the start of the weekend for a vacation before signing off on the new... MORE

Having, since the beginning of this year, severely curtailed crude oil deliveries to Lithuania, Russia has halted the deliveries altogether as of May 19. It was Russia's Lukoil company which had imposed the cuts; it is Russia's Fuel and Energy Ministry which halted them, on... MORE