In February of this year, President Vladimir Putin painted a rather grim picture of the crime situation in Russia and criticized the country's law enforcement agencies for failing to cope with it. A series of unrelated attacks and murders in Moscow yesterday (May 21) illustrate... MORE

On May 18-20, Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliev paid a long-expected official visit to Iran. Initially scheduled to have taken place in 1999, the visit was rescheduled and postponed again many times. A seemingly firm September 2001 date fell through as a result of Iranian naval... MORE

On May 17, a court in Donetsk acquitted Yury Veredyuk, who Ukrainian law enforcers hold responsible for the murder of Ihor Aleksandrov, the director of TOR TV company, in July 2001. Homeless and jobless Veredyuk had insisted that he killed Aleksandrov by mistake. He had... MORE

Just three days before Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin are scheduled to hold summit talks in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia yesterday played host to lawmakers from the country that many see as the next target in Washington's antiterror war: Iraq. The visit... MORE

On May 19, following a scandal-ridden campaign, the gubernatorial election in Smolensk Oblast took place. Viktor Maslov, head of the oblast's Federal Security Service (FSB) branch, defeated the incumbent governor, Aleksandr Prokhorov, 40.65 percent to 34.54 percent (Russian agencies, May 20). Prokhorov, who was running... MORE

On May 13, Krasnoyarsk Krai's legislative assembly was unable to decide whether to hold a referendum on merging the krai with the Taimyr and Evenk Autonomous Districts (Russian agencies, May 13). The legislature's indecision makes it less likely that the merger of the three entities... MORE

The deadline for the ultimatum laid down by a commander of rebel forces in Chechnya, Abu al-Walid, involving the fate of the crew of a Russian helicopter gunship, expired yesterday (May 20). Al-Walid, an Arab warlord who succeeded the recently deceased Khattab as commander of... MORE

On May 20, Estonia's Foreign Affairs Ministry announced that the Kyrgyz government has refused to allow the planned deployment of Baltic soldiers, as part of the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom, in Kyrgyzstan. The ministry stated that the country maintains its readiness to join the operation,... MORE

The NATO-sponsored naval exercise Cooperative Ocean 2002 was held on May 13-16 off Lithuania's port Klaipeda. Ten ships--from Britain, France, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Finland--took part in the exercise. It was the first naval exercise held in accordance with NATO's operational capabilities concept and... MORE

Russia and negotiators from the United States and NATO have managed in recent days to reach agreements on two of the key issues--strategic arms control and Russia-NATO cooperation--that threatened earlier to spoil this week's Russian-U.S. summit talks in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But with only... MORE