The Russian Security Council convened a meeting last week to discuss weapons proliferation issues and ways in which the Russian government might improve its control over its export of sensitive military technologies. The session was reportedly attended by First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, who... MORE

Moscow's official sympathies for Baghdad were in evidence again on February 12 when the Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement criticizing continuing U.S. and British military actions in Iraq. The statement expressed concern over increasing incidents of U.S. and British strikes in Iraq's no-fly zones,... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov yesterday denied a British press report saying that Russia had signed a deal worth more than US$160 million to reinforce Iraq's air defenses and upgrade its MiG-23 and MiG-29 fighters. Quoting unidentified diplomatic sources, London's "Sunday Telegraph" claimed that the... MORE

The judicial proceedings against Popular Front leader Abulfaz Elchibey, the former president of Azerbaijan, have been dropped. President Haidar Aliev "recommended" this step on February 10, and state prosecutors complied on February 11. Elchibey had been indicted for slandering the head of state, and faced... MORE

The gradually increasing mining unrest in Ukraine is threatening to seriously affect the October presidential elections. Yesterday, over 130 Ukrainian mines--including those in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Lviv and Volyn regions--continued extracting coal, but stopped dispatching it to customers. As of yesterday, only ten mines have... MORE

Today the campaign of "kompromat"--compromising materials--against financier Boris Berezovsky continued. "Moskovsky komsomolets" published what it said were telephone conversations Berezovsky had in 1997 and 1998, including one with Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin's younger daughter and "image" adviser. In that conversation, which allegedly took place August 1,... MORE

A delegation from NATO's Political Committee and another from Poland's Defense Ministry--a new member country of the alliance--paid parallel visits to Ukraine on February 10-12. Each delegation conferred with President Leonid Kuchma, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin, Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk, Defense... MORE

Yesterday an official with Russia's Audit Chamber, the independent state watchdog agency created by the parliament, charged that the Central Bank had issued illegal licenses allowing specific transfers of foreign currency in and out of Russia after those transfers had already taken place (Russian agencies,... MORE

Former Central Bank chief Sergei Dubinin has defended the Central Bank's use of an unknown offshore asset management firm to manage hard currency reserves. In an open letter published yesterday, Dubinin--now a senior executive at Gazprom, Russia's state natural gas monopoly--and his former deputy Sergei... MORE

The efforts of Russian government and space officials to save the thirteen-year-old Mir space station appear to have come to naught. The head of the Russian Space Agency, Yuri Koptev, said yesterday that the station might have to be discarded as early as August of... MORE