With presidential elections coming up in October, Ukraine's tiny center-left parties are clearly demonstrating that differences between them are about personalities and personal interests rather than ideology. At a press conference on April 5, Serhy Peresunko--leader of the Social-Democratic Union (SDU), the newest of the... MORE

The April 2 Moscow summit offered the Russian side a last chance to keep Georgia in the CIS Collective Security Treaty by means of a deal with Tbilisi over Abkhazia. The deal would have entailed Russian military support for repatriating to Abkhazia the Georgian expellees,... MORE

During the CIS summit held on April 2 in Moscow, Presidents Robert Kocharian of Armenia and Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan discussed the Karabakh conflict in a separate, three-hour session, in the second half of which Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov participated. The Russian side had... MORE

Relations between Russia and Japan took a step back late last week when talks in Tokyo failed to resolve differences between the two countries on a long-standing territorial dispute. The failure led the two sides to postpone--until "sometime in May"--a visit to Moscow by Japanese... MORE

As the Monitor has previously noted, the Skuratov scandal has potentially huge political ramifications, and could give the State Duma's planned attempt to impeach Yeltsin a genuine impetus. Oleg Morozov, head of the leftist Russian Regions Duma faction, warned yesterday that if the Duma begins... MORE

Top officials in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF)--including its leader Gennady Zyuganov, and State Duma security committee chairman Viktor Ilyukhin--have claimed that Skuratov's infamous letter to Yeltsin last week included the names of twenty VIPs who had stashed US$40 billion in Swiss... MORE

In other developments yesterday related to Kosovo, Russian sources said that moderate Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova had held talks in Pristina with Russia's ambassador to Yugoslavia, Yuri Kotov. Russian news agencies reported that Rugova had called for an end to NATO air strikes on... MORE

Yuri Skuratov, whom President Boris Yeltsin suspended last week as Russia's prosecutor general, will speak to the State Duma tomorrow (April 7). Skuratov said that his purpose in appearing before the Russian parliament's lower house is to put forward his position on the presidential decree... MORE

It was more of the same from Moscow yesterday, as Russian leaders continued to criticize NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia and to blame the strikes for the mounting humanitarian disaster in Kosovo. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov met yesterday with his foreign and defense ministers,... MORE

Russia and Belarus went into the summit determined to push through an anti-NATO and pro-Serbian resolution, even if it meant violating CIS rules of procedure. During the pre-summit negotiations over the agenda, a number of countries--including Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan--had exercised their right... MORE