Fugitive Lieutenant-Colonel Akaki Eliava, leader of the October 1998 military mutiny in western Georgia (see the Monitor, October 20, 21, 23, 1998), threatens to sabotage the western section of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline and to spark a secessionist movement in that area of Georgia if... MORE

Belarusan opposition leader Henadz Karpenka died yesterday at the age of 49 in a Minsk municipal clinic. Hospitalized on March 31 and diagnosed with cerebral hemorrhage, he underwent surgery for removal of a hematoma, and died without regaining consciousness. Karpenka was the chairman of the... MORE

The atmosphere in the North Caucasus remains tense. Nearly every day is marked by an act of terrorism or provocation. On April 3 in Dagestan an Mi-24 military helicopter crashed, killing its crew of three. While the military prosecutor's office in Makhachkala is working on... MORE

With the Ukrainian presidential elections scheduled for this October in mind, the reformist wing of the Rukh party and the liberal wing of the People's Democratic Party (NDP) are negotiating a coalition. The reformist Rukh faction, headed by Yury Kostenko, parted ways with the Rukh... MORE

Russia this week urged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to delay announcing Palestinian independence and to aim instead toward reviving the Middle East peace process. The Russian advice came during two days of talks in Moscow, during which Arafat met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Prime... MORE

Against the backdrop of the orders to arrest Boris Berezovsky and Aleksandr Smolensky, Yuri Skuratov, who was last week suspended as Russia's prosecutor general, spoke today before the State Duma. Skuratov, who last week also became the target of a criminal investigation into alleged abuse... MORE

The political ramifications of yesterday's arrest warrants by the Prosecutor General's Office for Boris Berezovsky and Aleksandr Smolensky remain murky. Dmitri Yakushkin, President Boris Yeltsin's spokesman, said Yeltsin had not been notified in advance about the warrants. Other Kremlin sources were quoted as saying that... MORE

Russia's already overheated domestic political temperature rose another few degrees yesterday when Russia's Prosecutor General's Office issued arrest warrants for two once-powerful "oligarchs"--Boris Berezovsky and Aleksandr Smolensky. The warrant for Berezovsky is connected with the investigation into the alleged embezzlement of funds from the state-run... MORE

Moscow's behavior with regard to the crisis in Kosovo has been much more measured than such rhetoric would suggest. The country did dispatch a first shipment of humanitarian aid yesterday. The truck convoy carrying the supplies--reported to consist mostly of medicines and foods--was headed to... MORE

Not unexpectedly, the Russian government yesterday was one of the few, of those most involved diplomatically in the Kosovo conflict, to welcome a ceasefire pledge made by Belgrade earlier in the day. In hailing the move, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called the ceasefire pledge... MORE