The prime ministers' meeting, its preliminaries and its aftermath highlighted two unprecedented trends in CIS politics, both testifying to the organization's progressive debility. First, Russia's internal power struggles divided what used to be the Russian side in the CIS. The split enabled most member countries... MORE

At the November 25 meeting of CIS prime ministers in Moscow, the Russian government--specifically, Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and CIS Cooperation Minister Boris Pastukhov--opposed Berezovsky's scheme to siphon power from the CIS internal structure and the Russian government itself (see the... MORE

The fate of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan appeared to get equal billing with both Russia's economic woes and Russian-Italian relations yesterday as Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini wound up a two-day visit to the Russian capital. Although both sides downplayed the issue, Ocalan was believed... MORE

Russian media have given attention to an article written by John Odling-Smee, the IMF official who was directly involved in negotiating the Russian loan package last summer. In the article, published in the November issue of the "Central European Economic Review," Odling-Smee says that international... MORE

Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov is scheduled to meet today in Moscow with Michel Camdessus, director of the IMF. The IMF has refused to release the second tranche, worth US$4.3 billion, of the multibillion-dollar bailout package it concluded with Russia last July, and the government is... MORE

All participants of yesterday's IMF meeting recognized that the prospects for future economic reform in Russia are bleak. A small minority argued that crisis always brings opportunity, and that the Russian government's desperate financial straits means that it will now have to accept tough conditions... MORE

Two dozen outside experts from Europe, Russia and the United States were invited to a meeting yesterday (November 30) at the International Monetary Fund in Washington to analyze the state of economic reform in Russia and the impact of IMF lending over the past seven... MORE

Mykola Biloblotsky, 54, has replaced the public politician Kushnaryov as the chief-of-staff of Leonid Kuchma's administration (Ukrainian media, November 25). Until then, Biloblotsky served as deputy premier for social policy in the cabinet of Pustovoytenko. Biloblotsky--an assiduous and reliable administrator, apparently not associated with any... MORE

The People's Democratic Party (NDP) should unite Ukrainian centrist forces into a new party with a new leader--Premier Valery Pustovoytenko--to support the incumbent President Leonid Kuchma in the upcoming elections. This opinion of a faction of the "party of power" was made public at a... MORE

The CIS countries' presidents without exception welcomed Berezovsky's proposal to establish a "free-trade area." A decision to that effect--with inherent disadvantages to non-CIS countries--had been taken as far back as 1994 and was restated at subsequent CIS summits. Like most CIS decisions, however, it was... MORE