Russia and South Korea have reportedly reached agreement on a barter deal by which Moscow will pay Seoul up to US$63 million of government debts worth US$160 million--due by the end of this year--in commodities such as aluminum and copper. The agreement came during negotiations... MORE

Friday's successful launch notwithstanding, officials connected to the space station effort have made clear that the ISS project is a daunting one in every way. They have also indicated that further delays and missteps are probably unavoidable, and that the chances for major reversals--or even... MORE

Heralding it as a new era in space exploration, officials of the sixteen-nation International Space Station (ISS) project applauded on Friday (November 20) as a Russian proton booster rocket carried the project's first component--a forty-one foot module called "Zarya," or "Sunrise"--into orbit above the earth.... MORE

Ludmila Alekseeva, a veteran Soviet-era human rights campaigner, also noted that Starovoitova had spoken out in the Duma about Makashov's remarks, and about the death of Larisa Yudina, a reporter murdered last summer while investigating alleged corruption by surrounding Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Kalmykia. Starovoitova,... MORE

Inevitably, the Moscow press and rumor mill were rife with possible "versions" of the murder and attempted murder. One version involves the elections for St. Petersburg's legislative assembly, set for December 6. The campaign has been, as one democratic activist put it, "extremely dirty," replete... MORE

Boris Yeltsin was rushed to the hospital on Sunday with pneumonia and a temperature of 102 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9 Celsius), the Kremlin announced today. Despite his condition, Yeltsin met today for forty minutes in the government's Central Clinical Hospital with visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin.... MORE

The murder of Galina Starovoitova, a State Duma deputy and co-chairman of the Democratic Russia movement, has sent shockwaves throughout Russia's establishment and further destabilized the country's political atmosphere. Starovoitova and one of her aides, Ruslan Linkov, were shot Friday night in the hallway of... MORE

Government security forces yesterday seized a "bomb factory" with its stock of explosives and an anti-government group in the southern city of Kurgon-Tepe. The city had until last year been a power base of Colonel Mahmud Hudoberdiev, whose rapid-deployment armored brigade--the strongest unit in the... MORE

The Georgian parliament approved yesterday the nomination of Davit Onoprishvili as finance minister. His immediate predecessor, "financial whiz-kid" Mikheil Chkuaseli, resigned last week under fire after his fiscal and monetary policies proved insufficient to forestall a financial crisis (see the Monitor, November 16). Onoprishvili, 37... MORE

Ukrainian Communist Party First Secretary Petro Symonenko yesterday called on President Leonid Kuchma to resign and "make room for those capable of pulling the country out of crisis--for the communists. It is high time for the communists to take the helm of power in their... MORE