The CIA delivered a report to Congress yesterday which outlines what the agency says is a growing weapons proliferation threat from Russian and Chinese businesses and quasi-government agencies. The report, which deals with the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, says that "entities" have... MORE

Suhrob Sharipov, a senior adviser to Tajikistan President Imomali Rahmonov, unveiled yesterday what looks like the president's and the government's strategy for the parliamentary elections. Scheduled for this September, these elections are supposed to mark the end of the civil war and sanction an equitable... MORE

Ukraine's chief banker, Viktor Yushchenko, was visibly disappointed on his return from the almost week-long negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington on resumption of loans to Ukraine. In a television interview which he gave on landing in Boryspil... MORE

Ukraine--in arrears by US$1.1 billion to Russia's Gazprom, and accused repeatedly of pilfering Russian gas bound for third countries--plans to lay a transit pipeline as a service to the Gazprom company through its territory. The construction cost, projected at US$250 million, would be deducted from... MORE

Russian National Unity (RNE)--the avowedly fascist movement led by Aleksandr Barkashov in Russia--seems to have begun seeping across the border into Latvia. The group has just distributed in Latvia, illegally, the first issue of a bulletin titled "Russkaya ataka" ["Russian Offensive"] in a purported print... MORE

The International Security Conference, a high-level annual event which closed on February 7 in Munich, ended on a controversial note owing to the intervention of Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Gusarov. As if to dispel smug talk among some Western--primarily German--officials about a definitive end... MORE

One piece of fallout from Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov's "resignation" last week has received surprisingly little attention. On February 4 a letter which Skuratov wrote on February 1, the day before he stepped down, was leaked to the press. In it, Skuratov charged that in... MORE

The looming confrontation pits Primakov against what Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Politika think tank, called Yeltsin's "family circle"--which includes Boris Berezovsky. "The president's family circle is unhappy with Primakov's excessive independence, unhappy with the fact that he is, in their view, in too close... MORE

Long-standing differences between Russia and Japan over negotiations on both a peace treaty and on resolution of the Kuril Islands territorial dispute remained much in evidence this week. On February 7 in Tokyo Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was quoted as saying that he intends... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin's trip to Amman to attend the funeral of King Hussein has sparked major speculation within Moscow's political circles. Most observers believe Yeltsin's trip was designed to show world leaders that they should not yet write him off. Perhaps more important, Yeltsin, who... MORE