In the course of an official visit late last week to Russia's Far Eastern Khabarovsk region, State Duma speaker Gennady Seleznev took the opportunity to sound off on several key foreign policy issues. Two of them are of some importance to the people of the... MORE

An unnamed but high-ranking Russian space official said yesterday that a final decision on the fate of the Mir space station will be made on July 2. In addition, he said that Russian space sector leaders had decided to maintain their public silence on the... MORE

President Yeltsin has sacked his representative to the Constitutional Court, Sergei Shakhrai, and replaced him with Mikhail Mityukov, who had held the post until Shakhrai took it over in December 1996. (Russian agencies, June 29) Shakhrai said he had been given no reason for his... MORE

Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin has announced a major new experiment that will begin in seven Russian cities in July. Speaking in St. Petersburg, one of the cities to take part in the experiment, Stepashin said the experiment will involve the creation of police sub-units at... MORE

Tensions in North Ossetia have risen sharply following the murders last weekend of two Ossetians in a district bordering Ingushetia. Local Ossetians insist that Ingush were responsible. North Ossetia's leaders have taken steps to regroup and deploy forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who,... MORE

The closed trial opened yesterday in Stavropol of Fatima Taimaskhanova and Aiset Dadasheva, accused of planting a bomb in a railroad station in Pyatigorsk last year. The proceedings were immediately adjourned to allow the accused to acquaint themselves with the materials of the investigation, which... MORE

At a congress just held in Riga, the People's Harmony Party approved a controversial decision to join with the Russian Party, the Socialist Party and the Ravnopravie (Equality) Movement in a political bloc. Labeled "For the Human Right to Live in a United Latvia," the... MORE

Ukrainian Popular Movement (Rukh) deputy Yuri Kostenko received 212 votes in yesterday's balloting for the post of chairman of parliament. The winner needs 226 votes in the 450-seat chamber. Communist leader Petro Symonenko had come even closer recently (see the Monitor, June 19). The coalition... MORE

Russian border troops will on July 16 begin "gradually" handing over the control of Georgia's borders to Georgian troops. The decision was announced in Tbilisi yesterday by Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Ukleba and the border troops' commander, Major-General Valery Chkheidze. The two men had... MORE

Russia's cabinet of ministers yesterday finalized, and forwarded to President Boris Yeltsin for approval, a draft agreement with Kazakhstan on dividing the Caspian Sea. The document is revealingly titled, "On the delimitation of the sea bottom in the northern Caspian Sea for ensuring sovereign rights... MORE