In addition to meeting with Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin announced in Moscow yesterday that he would present new proposals to the United States regarding the Kosovo conflict during his talks today with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Chernomyrdin gave no indication as to what those proposals... MORE

China remained an unexpected wild card in efforts to find a political solution to the Kosovo conflict yesterday, as Russia's special Balkans envoy wound up a brief stay in Beijing while China pushed for acceptance of a UN Security Council resolution condemning NATO for its... MORE

Members of the leftist opposition, predictably, expressed outrage at Primakov's ouster. Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev called it President Boris Yeltsin's "very large, probably most serious mistake of late," a sentiment echoed by Nikolai Ryzhkov, head of the Duma's leftist Popular Rule faction. Communist Party leader... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin today fired Yevgeny Primakov from the post of prime minister and appointed Sergei Stepashin--interior minister and Yeltsin loyalist whom the president recently named as a first deputy to Primakov--as acting prime minister. Yeltsin also appointed Nikolai Aksenenko, Russia's railroads minister, as... MORE

The alternative presidential balloting staged by the Belarusan opposition, set for May 6-16, is said to be unfolding in a promising manner, despite some spokes thrown in its wheels by none other than candidate Zyanon Paznyak. The Popular Front leader--whose party is one of several... MORE

Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliev addressed the country in a radio message on May 9 and in a televised appearance on May 10 from the Cleveland Clinic in the United States for the first time since undergoing cardiac surgery there on April 29. The operation involved... MORE

Writing in the May 7 issue of the Tallinn daily "Postimees," President Lennart Meri proposes turning the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)'s mission in Estonia into an independent research institute or a chair attached to a Tartu University department which would focus... MORE

Figures just released by Russia's Economics Ministry show that the CIS countries' aggregate trade with Russia in the first quarter of 1999 amounted to US$4.1 billion, signifying a dramatic decline of 45.3 percent compared to the corresponding period of 1998. The CIS share within Russia's... MORE

The Chechen authorities have finished work on a new constitution for the republic, which was begun in February after President Aslan Maskhadov issued a decree ordering the introduction of a government based on Islamic Sharia law. The secretary of the state commission charged with drafting... MORE

After yesterday's meeting of Yabloko's leadership--called to discuss how it will approach this week's expected vote on President Boris Yeltsin's impeachment--Grigory Yavlinsky confirmed that Yabloko will support the third of five impeachment articles, involving Yeltsin's 1994 decision to send troops to Chechnya (see the Monitor,... MORE