On the evening of June 15, Turkish authorities released a cargo ship stopped earlier that day on suspicion of carrying components for Russian missiles scheduled to be delivered to Cyprus. (See yesterday's Monitor) According to a Turkish Foreign Ministry official, the release of the ship,... MORE

The head of the Russian Accounting Chamber, Khachim Karmokov, is a sharp critic of the way the government manages the federal budget, for reasons he explained in a recent interview. (Argumenty i Fakty, No. 24, June). The Chamber, a financial watchdog that answers to the... MORE

Russia's financial markets rallied yesterday on news that the IMF is to send a mission to Moscow on June 22 and that some form of IMF help for Russia's ailing economy may be forthcoming. The stock market gained 4.2 percent yesterday, though this must be... MORE

The city of Moscow yesterday became the forty-sixth Russian region to sign a power-sharing treaty with the federal authorities. Moscow's treaty--which covers finance, real estate and law enforcement issues--has been a long time in the drafting. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was determined to secure special... MORE

Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin laid out his plans for reforming the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) after a meeting with President Boris Yeltsin on June 15. Within the next two years, Stepashin said, the ministry's troops will be cut from the present 240,000 to around... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov's warnings, just delivered in Vilnius, that Moscow rules out the Baltic states' accession to NATO, has triggered a sharp reaction from Lithuania's body politic across partisan lines. The country's leading daily, Lietuvos Rytas, no friend of the governing majority, comments... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry yesterday condemned Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves' remark that Russia displays the syndrome of "post-colonial stress." Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin described Ilves' remark as "rude" and "abusive" and "full of open hostility toward Russia." Ilves was discussing Russian-Estonian relations in... MORE

Students of the Humanistic Lyceum and their parents staged pickets in downtown Minsk yesterday to protest against the school's imminent liquidation. This lyceum is the last middle school that provides a complete education in the Belarusan language in the capital of Belarus. The authorities are... MORE

The 1,000 miners from Pavlohrad--cutting edge of the coal strike in Ukraine--decided yesterday to stop picketing the presidential administration and government buildings in Kyiv. The protest leaders and the government signed a protocol stipulating government compliance in three areas. First, government adherence to the parliament's... MORE

South-98, the first-ever joint military exercise of Ukraine and Moldova, began yesterday at Shiroky Lan testing grounds near Mikolayiv in Ukraine. The troops practice common actions to capture a "band of armed extremists" and to localize an ethnic conflict. A Ukrainian paratroop company from the... MORE