Former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko is currently in a Geneva jail for investigation on charges of financial fraud and money laundering. Geneva canton authorities suspect him of having unlawfully deposited in local banks tens of millions of dollars worth of funds embezzled in Ukraine (see... MORE

On December 4, Ukrainian lawmakers by 249 votes to 15 adopted the draft law on presidential elections in the first reading. The old legislation contradicted the constitution adopted in 1996 which restricted personal rights. To become a law, the draft must be later approved in... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka on December 4 merged the Ministry of External Economic Relations and the Ministry of CIS Affairs with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and appointed Ural Latypov to head the latter, beefed up ministry. Latypov, born in 1951 in Bashkiria, is a colonel... MORE

Speaking on Saturday (December 5) in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma said that the parliament's failure to adopt the 1999 budget in a timely fashion would cancel prospects of cooperation with the IMF, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).... MORE

The case against Richard Bliss, an American technician accused of spying late last year by Russian security forces, has apparently been extended for at least another four months. Attorneys for Bliss say that the U.S. State Department has informed them of the decision by Russian... MORE

Russia's Defense and Foreign Ministries have protested last week's arrest of Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic by NATO-led Stabilization Forces (SFOR) in Bosnia. Krstic, seized without incident on December 2 by U.S. troops serving under SFOR, was brought to the international war crimes tribunal in... MORE

Preliminary results of Sunday's voting for St. Petersburg's legislative assembly, in which 600 candidates contested 50 seats, indicated that Yabloko, the movement headed by economist Grigory Yavlinsky, received the most support. According to press reports today, 24 Yabloko candidates won enough votes to enter a... MORE

The firing of Yumashev would appear to deal a blow against Boris Berezovsky, the business tycoon and CIS executive secretary. Yumashev reportedly worked closely with Berezovsky, along with Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin's daughter. Yumashev and Berezovsky were said to be backing former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin... MORE

Just hours after returning to the Kremlin today following two weeks of hospitalization for pneumonia, President Boris Yeltsin fired Valentin Yumashev, his influential chief of staff, along with three of Yumashev's deputies--Yuri Yarov, Yevgeny Savostyanov and Mikhail Kommisar. Yumashev has been replaced by Nikolai Bordyuzha,... MORE

Officials of the United States and Ukraine have signed a program of economic cooperation which enshrines a new concept in bilateral relations and has no precedent in post-communist countries. Known as the "Kharkiv Initiative," the program seeks to attract U.S. capital and know-how to this... MORE