Reportedly to review Russia's military reform program, Russian President Boris Yeltsin conferred in Sochi yesterday with Defense Minister Igor Sergeev. Few details of the discussion were available. Reports said only that Yeltsin had approved the work done by the Defense Ministry to date this year.... MORE

Moscow made clear yesterday that Russian diplomats would do their utmost to block any decision by the UN Security Council authorizing the automatic use of military force to punish Iraq for its latest defiance of UN weapons inspectors. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin yesterday... MORE

There have been rumors in Moscow that Media-MOST chief Vladimir Gusinsky, founder of Most-Bank, would like to see Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky join forces with Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Thus, it was interesting to note the op-ed piece in today's "Moscow Times," the Russian capital's... MORE

Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Kulik said yesterday that the cabinet had received a number of offers from abroad to buy out insolvent banks. He viewed such offers, however, "very cautiously," fearing that foreign financial institutions would buy into the banking sector in order to siphon... MORE

Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko announced last Saturday that the Central Bank had released 14 billion rubles (a bit less than US$1 billion at current exchange rates) to a group of ailing commercial banks, including SBS-Agro, Mosbiznesbank, Most-Bank, Bank of Moscow and Moscow Industrial... MORE

Fugitive rebel leader Akaki Eliava and several Zviadist chieftains published in the Tbilisi press yesterday an ultimatum-like set of demands to President Eduard Shevardnadze. They are asking him to: release the Zviadists detained after their October 19 abortive putsch, issue a "political and legal assessment... MORE

In a statement distributed yesterday, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry rejected the Russian Duma's "territorial demands on Ukraine," which had been raised "not for the first time" in a debate on Crimea and Sevastopol last week. A large majority of Duma deputies refused to ratify a... MORE

On October 29 the IMF approved disbursement of the US$78 million second tranche of the US$2.2 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan to Ukraine. This was less than the US$125 million Kyiv initially expected. The decision to disperse this tranche had itself been postponed from... MORE

Aleksandr Nikitin, the retired naval officer accused of treason for work done with a Norwegian environmental group, won a reprieve late last week when a St. Petersburg judge ruled that prosecutors had failed to compile adequate evidence against him. Nikitin went to trial on October... MORE

At a congress just held in Moscow, and numbered "thirty-first" to show continuity, the Union of Communist Parties-CPSU (SKP-CPSU) issued a political declaration calling on the peoples of the former USSR to reunite in a "federal union of equal sovereign states of the Soviet type."... MORE