President Alyaksandr Lukashenka yesterday called for "synchronization of the military reforms" of Russia and Belarus. Addressing the graduating class of the national military academy, Lukashenka urged Russia to maintain the force levels needed for offsetting an enlarged NATO and for "defending the border of the... MORE

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev paid an "unofficial" visit to Moscow from July 5 to July 7 for discussions with President Boris Yeltsin and other Russian leaders. Both presidents claimed emphatically that they strove to avert potential violent conflicts between Russia and Kazakhstan. "Our two countries... MORE

Last week, the highest officials in the Russian government reiterated the importance of the country's strategic nuclear weapons and stressed that they would retain the triad of ground-, sea- and air-launched nuclear systems for the next decade. Yet the figures they discussed made it clear... MORE

The White House announced on July 6 that President Bill Clinton will travel to Moscow sometime in September for a long-awaited summit meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. An exact date for the meeting has apparently not yet been set, but U.S. Vice President Al... MORE

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday underscored Moscow's hope that the recent spy scandal involving Russia and South Korea would not harm broader ties between the two countries. Vladimir Rakhmanin also called on Seoul to recognize that Moscow had no other choice than to act... MORE

Russia has reached an outline agreement with the IMF and the World Bank on a new aid package of approximately US$15 billion. This is intended as a "dormant" loan--one which will not be spent but will instead sustain the ruble's exchange rate vis-a-vis the dollar.... MORE

A crowd of some ten thousand people turned out in Moscow yesterday for the funeral of State Duma deputy Lev Rokhlin. Rokhlin, who led a pro-military opposition movement, was shot dead at his dacha outside Moscow in the early hours of July 3. Opposition leaders... MORE

At the behest of President Boris Yeltsin, Russian Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin has made a tour of inspection in Stavropol Krai and Dagestan. In Stavropol, a special antiterrorism and anti-kidnapping administration has been set up, combining all the elite units of the federal forces stationed... MORE

In separate statements yesterday in Washington and Minsk, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk and First Deputy Foreign Minister Anton Buteyko offered a highly restrictive definition of the country's membership in the CIS. The two officials listed a total of six negative conditions. According to Tarasyuk,... MORE

Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin yesterday rejected U.S. charges that Russian force levels in Armenia and Moldova transgress the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. The criticism, contained in a report of the U.S. administration to the Congress, reportedly focuses on massive Russian transfers of... MORE