On the heels of Belarusan President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Patriarch Aleksy II of Moscow and all Russia has flown to Serbia on a fraternization mission described as peacemaking. Today Aleksy descended on Belgrade at the head of a thirty-strong delegation of Russian Orthodox clergymen and received... MORE

Ukraine's Black Sea Fleet began yesterday a major exercise whose tasks include: --launching artillery, missile and torpedo strikes against an attacking fleet (by shore batteries and combat ships)--pursuing an intruding submarine--repelling an air attack--laying mines and de-activating them--staging an amphibious landing. Supervised by the Ukrainian... MORE

In rewriting the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, and trying to assuage Russian concerns about NATO expansion, the three new members of NATO--the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland--have made particular concessions. They have agreed to reduce the size of their weapons holdings and... MORE

Only two days after Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov denounced a Russian newspaper for allegedly trying to sow political discord between himself and Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov (see the Monitor, April 19), Russian President Boris Yeltsin yesterday lodged a similar complaint himself. During a Kremlin meeting... MORE

As enraged as the Russians are with NATO over the bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, they realize that it is in their long-term security interests to continue to cooperate with NATO in a number of areas. One of the most important of these is the ongoing... MORE

Yeltsin's focus yesterday on Kosovo came less than a week after he appointed former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as the Kremlin's special envoy for the Kosovo crisis. The Kremlin explained that unexpected appointment as part of a move aimed at strengthening Moscow's diplomatic efforts to... MORE

The situation in the Balkans continued to dominate headlines in Moscow yesterday as President Boris Yeltsin convened a meeting of top government officials to discuss the crisis. He also held a long telephone conversation with U.S. President Bill Clinton--their first since the start of the... MORE

The Baku-Supsa export pipeline for Azerbaijani oil was festively inaugurated on April 16 in the presence of Presidents Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan, Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia and Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, managers of the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC, the multibillion oil consortium) and senior... MORE

Ukraine's largest reformist party, the Rukh, shows signs of what seems to amount to a split personality. A sure indication of this: two presidential "candidates" for the upcoming October elections. While the two Rukh wings do not disagree ideologically, their respective stances regarding President Leonid... MORE

Romanian Defense Minister Victor Babiuc announced on April 17 that Russia would not be allowed to use Romanian airspace for flying humanitarian aid to Yugoslavia. Russia may only transport the aid to Yugoslavia across Romania only by land, which will enable Romanian authorities to check... MORE