Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush wound up their three-day summit in Texas yesterday with a relaxed and friendly visit to a local high school that appeared to symbolize both the increasingly close ties between Russia and the United States and the ever more... MORE

The state news agency Itar-Tass, citing military sources in Dushanbe, reported today that twenty-six Chechen fighters were among a group of foreign pro-Taliban fighters captured by the forces of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in the village of Khadzhagar, located in the northern Afghan province of... MORE

The collapse of the Taliban/al-Qaida front in parts of Afghanistan and the likelihood of a protracted unconventional conflict has strengthened the rationale for deploying Western forces under U.S. leadership in Central Asia. By all evidence, NATO allies are the only ones both able and willing... MORE

Former Chechen rebel field commander Salman Raduev and three other men went on trial yesterday for leading the 1996 terrorist raid on a hospital in Kizlyar, Dagestan, which left seventy-eight people dead. In an indication of how important the Russian authorities consider the case against... MORE

On November 14, Lithuania's left-of-center government approved a privatization program for Lietuvos Dujos (Lithuanian Gas), the 92-percent state-owned importer and distributor of natural gas. The long-awaited move is doubly significant. First, it resumes progress on energy sector privatization, which had stalled after having been launched... MORE

Day one of this week's Russian-U.S. summit meeting, which produced an abundance of friendly rhetoric and a half dozen joint statements, appeared to confirm once again Moscow's and Washington's hopes of leaving behind Cold War-era tensions and moving on to a new era of friendship... MORE

In a sign that a purge of Yeltsin-era officials may be continuing and even accelerating, Sergei Stepashin, head of the Audit Chamber, which is tasked to ensure the proper use of federal money, yesterday accused the government, headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, of having... MORE

When they met in Slovenia in June, U.S. President George W. Bush raised with Russian President Vladimir Putin the issue of the Tengiz (Kazakhstan)-Novorossiisk (Russia) pipeline, the single largest American investment project in Russia, affected by extortionary practices on the part of Russian authorities. Yet... MORE

Following a withdrawal of outside financing and weaker-than-expected privatization revenues, the Moldovan government is currently taking steps to avoid defaulting on its international debt. In 2000, Moldova's foreign debt stood at US$1.635 billion--126 percent of GDP. The Moldovan government will have to pay approximately US$100... MORE

As President Vladimir Putin launched the first of three days of summit talks with President George W. Bush yesterday, some Russian newspapers were still focusing on a meeting Putin had conducted with his top military commanders only hours before his departure for Washington. The meeting... MORE