Integration processes in the CIS are bogged down," Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov admitted yesterday. Ivanov spoke to the Consultative Council of Russian Federation Subjects for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. Created by the central government to harness regional ambitions in the sphere of external... MORE

Ivanov's hint of ambivalence about the U.S. aid proposal may have sprung not only from the absence of details in Clinton's proposal, but also from the circumstances under which the proposal was delivered. Tensions between Moscow and Washington remain raw in the wake of the... MORE

The Russian government yesterday cautiously welcomed a U.S. proposal which would increase American financial assistance aimed at improving nuclear security in Russia and other former Soviet states. The proposal, which U.S. President Bill Clinton made during his State of the Union speech on January 19,... MORE

First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov said yesterday that Russian law enforcement agencies were continuing to investigate what happened to credits given to Russia by international financial institutions. Maslyukov said, "The Americans themselves ask: 'What did you [Russia] do with US$10 billion?'--and say [that these... MORE

Russia's center-right political coalition--which features such luminaries as Boris Nemtsov, Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar--announced yesterday that it will call itself Pravoe Delo (Right Cause). During a meeting of the coalition's organizational committee, Nemtsov, who also heads his own movement ("Young Russia"), launched into a... MORE

Mikhail Lesin, first deputy chairman of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), has denied that Yuri Kobaladze, head of the public relations and mass media department of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), is about to be named a deputy head of the... MORE

Kyrgyzstan's presidential office announced yesterday that it is asking the Russian authorities to apprehend and extradite Shalkhar Jaisanbaev, the dismissed director-general of the state oil and gas monopoly, Kyrgyzgazmunaizat. President Askar Akaev had last week fired Jaisanbaev for alleged massive embezzlement and defrauding certain credit... MORE

Georgia's Defense Ministry has, for the first time, appointed military attaches both in Washington and at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Both appointees are young lieutenant-colonels. The attache at NATO, Davit Nairashvili, is the son of a Georgian general who was killed in action during the... MORE

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry yesterday denied media reports on a Ukrainian sale of fifty T-55 tanks to war-torn Angola. Such reports seek to disguise the real seller's identity and shift the blame, the ministry's chief spokesman Oleh Strekal said in Kyiv. Strekal also expressed concern over... MORE

Speaking in Kyiv on January 19, Mohammed Shadman-Valavi, head of the International Monetary Fund's Second European Department, described Ukraine's economic situation as critical and said that its prospects for getting foreign loans are rather bleak. "No one now," he said, "will give Ukraine additional money."... MORE