The battle for the governorship of Oryel Oblast grows fiercer as election day--October 28--approaches. On one side is incumbent governor Yegor Stroev, who doubles as speaker of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. On the other is the regional branch of the Union of... MORE

The situation in the Russian republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the country's largest, shows what can happen when an incumbent loses the support of the local elite. Sakha's President Mikhail Nikolaev has already served two terms in office. Hoping to benefit from recent changes in federal... MORE

Intolerable on a number of counts, yet long tolerated nevertheless, Russia's manipulation of the Abkhazia problem threatens not only the Georgian state. It increasingly impinges on Western interests in the Caspian-Caucasus region and violates norms and pacts that underlie the post-1991 international order. In Abkhazia,... MORE

The Prosecutor General's Office has issued an arrest warrant for Boris Berezovsky, the one-time Kremlin insider who went into self-imposed exile last year after falling out with President Vladimir Putin. The charges against Berezovsky, which were reported in the media late last week, are connected... MORE

In what appears to be a related development, the Prosecutor General's Office confirmed yesterday that it had filed criminal charges against Nikolai Aksenenko, Russia's railways minister, an erstwhile Berezovsky protege who was once viewed as a possible successor to Boris Yeltsin. Aksenenko was summoned to... MORE

Following last week's armed clashes in northwestern Georgia, an uneasy lull has set in. The confrontations pitted Russian-backed Abkhaz forces against that elusive grouping of Chechens and Georgians who had since August wreaked havoc on an area straddling the Georgian-Abkhaz demarcation line, close to the... MORE

Renewed American and Azerbaijani interest in building a westbound Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) gives Turkmen President Saparmurat Niazov a chance to reactivate that project, which he has capriciously sidelined. The PSG consortium--made up of the Bechtel, General Electric and Shell companies--remains interested in the project... MORE

As presidential delegations from both the United States and Russia arrived in Shanghai yesterday on the eve of this weekend's Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, speculation continued to swirl about President Vladimir Putin's unexpected October 17 announcement that Russia will withdraw its troops and personnel... MORE

Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya, issued a decree yesterday dissolving the joint apparatus of the republic's administration and government and replacing it with a structure directly subordinated to him. After issuing the decree, Kadyrov downplayed the significance of the change, saying... MORE

Ukraine's election law saga--four presidential vetoes on draft election laws since the beginning of the year--may be close to an end. On October 17, President Leonid Kuchma and parliamentary leaders reportedly reached a compromise, according to which the official election campaign will be shortened and... MORE