Uzbekistan has announced that it will not prolong its membership in the CIS Collective Security Treaty when it expires this coming April. Uzbekistan's move is the more stinging as the pact was signed in its capital and is generally known as the Tashkent Treaty. Uzbekistan's... MORE

According to the influential Moscow daily "Nezavisimaya gazeta," which is controlled by CIS Executive Secretary Boris Berezovsky, the CIA and U.S. oil companies are using Azerbaijan against Russia's strategic interests. In a continuing series "on the anti-Russian policy of the United States in the Caspian... MORE

The "strategic task" of Belarusan agriculture is to reach, by the year 2000 or afterward, the output levels of 1990, the last full year of Soviet rule. Those were the stated hopes and marching orders of the February 3 conference of agricultural officials in Minsk,... MORE

Ukraine's parliament was expected to vote yesterday on the appeal from the General Prosecutor's Office to lift former Premier Pavlo Lazarenko's deputy immunity. Lazarenko, leader of the Hromada faction, is suspected of embezzlement in Ukraine. He was arrested first in Switzerland at the end of... MORE

The Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of CIS Countries held its twentieth meeting yesterday in Moscow. Billed as an anniversary occasion by Russia, the meeting marked instead a new low in the history of this CIS body. Some ministers declined to attend, sending deputies instead.... MORE

Russian media continues to speculate on the February 2 Sibneft raid, the question of whether it was linked to Skuratov's apparently forced resignation and the larger implications of both events. Most media have ruled out the Kremlin's explanations for Skuratov's departure. Officially, the Kremlin says... MORE

On February 3 two prominent advisers, Sergei Markov and Vladimir Volkov, publicly counseled the Russian government to exploit the Kosovo crisis as an opportunity to instigate anti-American sentiment in Western Europe while providing limited support to Serbia. Markov, director of the Political Studies Institute, and... MORE

Russia's troubled space program suffered yet another setback yesterday when an ambitious attempt to reflect sunlight back to earth failed due to a technical glitch. The crew of the Russian space station Mir had intended to use an 82-foot fabric mirror--named "Znamya" or "Banner"--to reflect... MORE

Yesterday's failure on Mir is only the latest in a series of problems Russia's demoralized cash-strapped space program faces. On February 1, U.S. space agency officials said that NASA is already developing contingency plans to build a propulsion system and escape vehicles for the International... MORE

Aleksandr Nikitin, a retired Russian naval officer facing treason charges for his participation in an environmental study, suffered yet another setback yesterday when Russia's Supreme Court rejected an appeal that the charges against him be dropped. Nikitin was arrested in February 1996 on charges of... MORE