The world after September 11 offers an added raison d'etre to the countries in the GUUAM group of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Almost overnight, one member country--Uzbekistan--has become a de facto ally of the United States militarily and diplomatically. Once the antiterrorism operation... MORE

Russia's deepening integration with the West and its growing role as a partner in consultations on key international security issues has been vividly on display this week as a host of European leaders and top officials have made their way to the Russian capital for... MORE

Russia's special services are warning that the Chechen rebels are planning a series of terrorist attacks across southern Russia. According to a report published today, thirty-two terrorists belonging to a group formed by the Chechen rebel field commander Khattab, who is thought to be a... MORE

Ukraine has at last officially admitted having accidentally shot down the Tu-154 Russian airliner over the Black Sea on October 4. The crash killed all seventy-eight Israelis and Russians on board. On October 24, President Leonid Kuchma finally accepted Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk's resignation. Next... MORE

On October 19, Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former deputy prime minister for energy and current harsh critic of the government, gathered the public organizations supporting her bloc, National Salvation Forum (NSF), in Kyiv. The meeting was designed to be a demonstration of force of the NSF,... MORE

Talks between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, conducted on October 21 on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shanghai, appear to have done little to clarify or further bilateral talks on the issue that has been... MORE

President Vladimir Putin's representative in the Southern federal district, Viktor Kazantsev, called a press conference yesterday to announce that he had received a call that morning from Akhmed Zakaev, representative of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. Zakaev requested a meeting in Moscow to discuss, in... MORE

Neither the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya nor the Russian military establishment greeted the news of the planned Zakaev-Kazantsev meeting with enthusiasm. Akhmed Kadyrov, head of the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya, dismissed the planned meeting as Maskhadov's "latest trick," insisting that only "the procedure for disarmament"... MORE

The fighting, recently staged along and across the Abkhaz-Georgian demarcation line, has again exposed the unreliability of Russia's "peacekeeping" operation. As on past occasions, the operation's command in Sukhumi made inflammatory anti-Georgian and anti-Western statements, helped transfer weaponry to Abkhaz forces, and presumably loaned pilots... MORE

Several days after a meeting between the Russian and U.S. presidents at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shanghai, it remains unclear whether Moscow and Washington are on the verge of a major strategic arms control agreement--as a number of news sources suggested... MORE