The controversy surrounding the Central Bank's use of an obscure offshore asset management company to hide hard currency reserves has taken a new twist. Russian media reported today that what has "ruffled the feathers" of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not former Prosecutor General... MORE

Local administrators on Russia's beleaguered--and disputed--south Kuril Islands reportedly requested emergency fuel aid from Japan yesterday. According to news agency reports, Vladimir Zema, head of the South Kuril district administration, said yesterday that two of the four islands face catastrophic fuel shortages. In several towns,... MORE

Reverberations continued in Moscow yesterday over a British newspaper report claiming that Russia had signed a secret, US$160 million deal to reinforce Iraq's air defenses and to upgrade its MiG fighters. The allegations were published in "The Sunday Telegraph" this past weekend and drew immediate... MORE

Moscow has continued in recent days to align itself diplomatically with hardline Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov yesterday ruled out the possibility of punitive NATO military strikes on Yugoslavia and said that a NATO peacekeeping force could be introduced into the... MORE

On February 13 in Ashgabat, the Turkmen government and the German companies Siemens and Mannesmann signed an agreement to build a large-scale compressor station for the Korpeje-Kurt Kui gas pipeline to Iran. The station will boost the pipeline's annual export capacity by 2 billion cubic... MORE

Russia's 201st motorized division, acting as a "CIS peacekeeping force" in Tajikistan, is erecting a bell tower for an Orthodox church at a Russian military settlement in Dushanbe. The foundation stone was laid at a special ceremony yesterday. Russia's ambassador to Tajikistan, Yevgeny Belov, and... MORE

In a sharply worded note to Russia's Foreign Ministry on February 13, Georgia's Foreign Ministry protested against the Abkhaz and South Ossetian secessionist leaders' participation in a meeting of the leaders of North Caucasus republics and regions of the Russian Federation. The Russian side, bypassing... MORE

Visiting Russia's Udmurt Republic, Belarusan President Alyaksandr Lukashenka announced a program to modernize the weaponry of the Belarusan army in response to NATO's enlargement. In Udmurtia's capital of Izhevsk, a major center of Russia's military industry, Lukashenka inspected the Kupol plant, which is currently upgrading... MORE

Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov went out of his way this weekend to deny rumors of tension between him and President Boris Yeltsin. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy--a nongovernmental organization composed of more than a hundred leading politicians,... MORE

Seventeen police officers who died in the February 10 blaze in the Interior Ministry's Samara regional headquarters were buried over the weekend. Among those who attended the funeral were Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin and conductor Mystaslav Rostropovich. According to one report, the death toll had... MORE