Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov also held a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Manila yesterday. The meeting with reporters actually preceded talks between the two diplomats that were expected to last well into the night. During the press conference,... MORE

High-ranking military delegations from the Russian and Chinese General Staffs wound up five days of consultations in Beijing yesterday. The talks marked the second time that General Staff personnel from the two countries had met for talks, the first round having taken place in Moscow... MORE

Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko surprised everyone yesterday by praising the achievements of General Nikolai Kovalev, ousted over the weekend by President Yeltsin from his post as chief of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). The way Kirienko told it, Kovalev had been dismissed to make way... MORE

The parliamentary commission on impeaching President Yeltsin met yesterday to examine the first of five charges against him. The commission's task is not to determine the president's guilt, merely to decide whether there is a case for him to answer before the upper house of... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin on July 25 ordered the government to sell off a 5 percent stake in Gazprom, the world's biggest natural gas producer, in order to boost state revenues. The state owns a 40 percent stake in the company, of which it directly administers... MORE

The Russian government is continuing to reinforce the administrative border between Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus. A joint command exercise began yesterday in the border regions. Scheduled to last five days, it will involve 15,000 personnel from all the services involved in... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko is expected to meet with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in the Chechen capital, Djohar, this week. Maskhadov said he was ready to meet Kirienko. He stressed that Russia should make good on earlier promises of financial and other aid to... MORE

On an inspection visit to Kaliningrad, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov ruled out the proposed upgrading of the region's status to that of an autonomous Baltic Russian Republic within the Russian Federation. The Federation Council's former chairman, Vladimir Shumeiko, currently running for governor of... MORE

Several thousand Belarusans, mostly young people, demonstrated in central Minsk yesterday for the country's independence and against dictatorship. The Popular Front's affiliate Young Front was the main organizer of the event. Police were present in force to intimidate the public. (NTV, July 27) July 27... MORE

Assessing the results of the first session of the new Ukrainian parliament, Socialist leader and political aspirant Oleksandr Moroz spoke of the emergence of a "third force" in Ukrainian politics--describing it as consisting of his own Socialist Party, the latter's close ally the Peasant Party,... MORE