Russia and Cyprus have finalized an agreement which will bring Russian S-300 air defense missiles to the Greek island of Crete rather than to Cyprus itself. The accord was signed in Moscow yesterday by Cypriot Defense Minister Yiannakis Chrysostomis and Grigory Rapota, head of the... MORE

The Kosovo crisis, meanwhile, was a major topic of discussion during yesterday's talks in Moscow between Russian government leaders and their counterparts from both the European Union and Germany. Following a meeting with German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters... MORE

Clinton administration officials denied yesterday that President Boris Yeltsin had delivered any new message to Washington warning the United States against launching airstrikes on Yugoslavia. Western and Russian news agencies reported yesterday that Yeltsin had told Clinton during a telephone conversation that "we will not... MORE

Uzbekistan today is observing a day of mourning for the victims of the February 16 bomb attacks, which narrowly missed the country's leadership and caused substantial damage in Tashkent (see the Monitor, February 17). The city center remains cordoned off by troops with armored vehicles,... MORE

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze yesterday praised Russia's consent to withdraw border troops from Georgia, but drew attention to the far larger problem of Russian army troops still based there. Shevardnadze mentioned that Russia owes compensation for the military assets it withdrew unlawfully from Georgia after... MORE

Ukrainian lawmakers yesterday, by a vote of 310 to 39, lifted the immunity from former Premier Pavlo Lazarenko, the leader of the Hromada party and faction and the presidential candidate for the upcoming October elections. The parliament effectively endorsed prosecution and arrest of the former... MORE

By a margin of 106 to 25, Russia's Federation Council voted yesterday to ratify the interstate treaty with Ukraine. The chamber added, however, a condition under which the treaty would take legal effect only after the Ukrainian parliament ratifies a set of three bilateral agreements... MORE

Latvia's Internal Affairs Ministry and Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC) are concerned by the sudden emergence in Latvia of Russian National Unity (RNE), a local offshoot of Aleksandr Barkashov's neo-Nazi organization in Russia. In statements made on February 16 and 17, respectively,... MORE

The anonymous investigator from the Prosecutor General's Office, who spoke with "Moskovskie vedomosti" about Yuri Skuratov's resignation as chief of that office, also said that financier Boris Berezovsky's arrest is imminent. According to the official's account, the search earlier this month of the offices of... MORE

Yuri Shutov, a deputy in St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly and a prominent businessman, was arrested on February 16 on charges of having organized contract murders. Shutov is accused of running a criminal gang which murdered, among others, Igor Dubovik, a leading lawyer who had ties... MORE