The tension surrounding the Federation Council's decision last week to vote against Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov's resignation has continued to rise, especially in view of the fact that Skuratov and his investigators are reportedly continuing their probes into high-level corruption, including cases allegedly involving President... MORE

On March 19 President Boris Yeltsin fired Nikolai Bordyuzha as his chief of staff and secretary of the Security Council. The Kremlin's statement [announcing Bordyuzha's removal as head of the Kremlin administration] said the step was taken "in connection with a transfer to other work"... MORE

Gazprom chairman Rem Vyakhirev asserted on March 16 that construction work on the Russian "Blue Stream" gas pipeline to Turkey, along the bottom of the Black Sea, should start this year. Gazprom's partner in this project, the Italian government-controlled ENI corporation, will provide the technology... MORE

Defense Ministers Davit Tevzadze of Georgia, Safar Abiev of Azerbaijan and Oleksandr Kuzmuk of Ukraine met on March 17-18 in Tbilisi to discuss tripartite security cooperation in the Caspian-Black Sea region. They focused on a plan, first intimated at their January 1999 meeting in Baku... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin yesterday ordered the creation of a working group to draft a Treaty of Unification for the top leaders of Russia and Belarus to sign. The working group will be chaired by CIS Cooperation Minister Boris Pastukhov and supervised by Russian Prime... MORE

In a March 15 news conference, broadcast live in Georgia, President Eduard Shevardnadze described the accession of the ex-Warsaw Pact countries Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO as "a landmark in the process of unification of Europe, overcoming the division that totalitarianism had... MORE

Prime Minister Vilis Kristopans and officials in his party, Latvia's Way, should find it no longer possible to support the country's top internal security official, Lainis Kamaldins, after the latest flap. Kamaldins, Director of Latvia's Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC), hypothesized in... MORE

In a special address to the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) yesterday, the GUAM group of countries--Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova--congratulated the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland on their admission to NATO. Terming the Atlantic alliance a source... MORE

According to a Russian media report today, Swiss federal prosecutor Carla del Ponte is expected to arrive in Moscow on March 23. While the Swiss authorities have thus far said that the trip only concerns "coordinating forces in the fight against crime," one newspaper said... MORE

An estimated 8,000 Chechen-Kistins, one of Chechnya's ethnic minorities, are living in regions of Georgia which border Chechnya, and Georgian authorities have become alarmed at what is going on in these regions. "Chechnya has become one of the main sources of narcotics in Georgia. The... MORE