Azerbaijan's Economics Minister Namig Nasrullaev has just completed a visit to Poland for discussions on the plan to export Caspian oil via Ukraine to Poland, the Baltic region and Western Europe. The idea is to pipe the oil across Poland, from Brody on the Ukrainian... MORE

The chairman of the Odessa Oblast Arbitration Court, Borys Vykhrov, and the director of the local television company AMT, Ihor Bondar, were assassinated by as yet unidentified gunmen during the night of May 16-17 near the city of Odessa as they drove in Vykhrov's car.... MORE

Ukrainian forces advocating "red revenge" failed to agree on a single leftist candidate before the start of the country's presidential campaign scheduled for October of this year. Each of Ukraine's three strongest "red" parties, during their pre-election congresses on May 15, came up with their... MORE

In a related development, acting Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin suggested yesterday that the dismissal of Yevgeny Primakov will not have any impact on Russian foreign policy--either with regard to the Kosovo crisis or more broadly. In remarks before the Russian Federation Council and during... MORE

Western leaders hope also to confirm today that Moscow continues to support their framework for a peaceful settlement of the Kosovo conflict. The principles of this framework were agreed upon jointly by foreign ministers from Russia and the leading Western democracies during a meeting in... MORE

Intense diplomatic maneuvering continued in Europe yesterday as momentum built for a new diplomatic initiative aimed at ending the conflict in Kosovo. Western officials appeared to be placing their hopes on a possible joint mission to Belgrade by Russia's special Balkans envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and... MORE

A number of observers have already noted that Stepashin, if confirmed, is not likely to carry out radical economic reforms, but instead a policy which largely continues those carried out--or, at any rate, given lip service--by the Primakov cabinet. Like Primakov, Stepashin, in his current... MORE

A fight is clearly shaping up around who will get the key posts in the new Russian cabinet. Stepashin said he will only name the cabinet once he is confirmed (see the Monitor, May 17). Aleksandr Zhukov, however, head of the Duma's budget committee, has... MORE

The first of three possible votes in the State Duma over Sergei Stepashin's candidacy to become prime minister is scheduled for tomorrow. The Duma is likely to confirm him on the first vote (see the Monitor, May 17). President Boris Yeltsin's spokesman, Dmitri Yakushkin, said... MORE

Armenia's former Education Minister Ashot Bleian was arrested on May 14 and placed in pretrial investigative detention on charges of embezzlement. The charges are mostly backdated to Bleian's ministerial tenure in 1994-95, but also refer to his subsequent tenure as headmaster of one of Yerevan's... MORE