Addressing the Ukrainian parliament yesterday at the outset of the fall session, Budget Committee chairwoman Yulia Tymoshenko called for the impeachment of President Leonid Kuchma. Tymoshenko claimed that Kuchma's August 8 decree on cutting the 1998 budget expenditures violated the constitution. He also made the... MORE

Boris Fedorov, acting prime minister in charge of economic policy, said yesterday that he favors Russia's adoption of a currency board modeled, "with certain modifications," on that implemented in Argentina. (Financial Times, September 3) There, the introduction of a currency board enabled the country to... MORE

Russia's influential Federation Council may be about to throw its weight behind Chernomyrdin's candidacy. The upper house of the Russian parliament is due to meet in extraordinary session today to debate the present crisis. Yesterday, twenty of Russia's powerful regional leaders met with Chernomyrdin in... MORE

Acting Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov upped the pressure on the Duma yesterday by pointing out that not a single Russian political organization, including those parties and movement presently represented in the Duma, has the right to participate in parliamentary elections before May 1999. (Russian agencies,... MORE

Tycoon Boris Berezovsky hinted yesterday that President Boris Yeltsin may have to resign if "strong political authority is not created" in Russia. If such authority is not created soon, Berezovsky told a Moscow radio station, Yeltsin "will likely have to step down in order to... MORE

The Duma yesterday adopted a motion of censure on the chairman of the Central Bank, Sergei Dubinin, calling the efforts to overcome the financial crisis taken by the government and the Central Bank belated and unsatisfactory. Five essential elements are clear. First, the Bank is... MORE

The Japanese government yesterday applauded the Russian-U.S. summit agreement on sharing information related to ballistic missile launches (see previous story). Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said in Tokyo that it was "desirable that the two states holding missiles [Russia and the United States] reached an... MORE

There was a time when each Russo-American summit was marked by the announcement of a significant new step in nuclear disarmament. Had the actors in this week's Moscow summit been able to follow the script, the meeting would have seen Russia ratify START II and... MORE

Aside from the two accords described above, the latest Russian-U.S. summit produced--as had been expected--only meager results. At a desultory final press conference yesterday that contrasted with the spirited welcome given the U.S. president by Boris Yeltsin a day earlier, Clinton reiterated his call for... MORE

United Tajik Opposition (UTO) commander in chief Mirzo Zio yesterday handed over to Dushanbe three gunmen suspected of having murdered four members of the UN Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) on July 20. Zio's troops apprehended the suspects in the Tavildara area, where the... MORE