Russia's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, stepped up pressure on the Duma yesterday to move expeditiously to ratify START II. Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin underscored to reporters the importance of START II to Russia's security. He also described START II ratification as the springboard to a follow-up... MORE

On May 18, only a day after proliferation issues figured prominently in talks between Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, Russia and Iran announced their intention to explore expanding their cooperation in the area of nuclear energy. The announcement came at the end of a... MORE

Russia warned Pakistan on May 18 that the conduct by Islamabad of a nuclear test would yield an international reaction "no less harsh" than that which occurred following the recent underground nuclear tests conducted by India. That statement, released by Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky, came... MORE

Taking Russian President Boris Yeltsin at his word, Latvia is redoubling efforts to obtain an invitation for President Guntis Ulmanis to visit Russia. As soon as Yeltsin had made that offer on May 15 during the G-8 summit in Birmingham, Ulmanis directed the Latvian Foreign... MORE

In progress since May 4 (see The Monitor, May 6), the coal strike in Ukraine was aptly described yesterday as "neither growing nor dying out." A more or less constant number of forty-five mines participate in the strike, called by the Independent Trade Union of... MORE

Updated reports have raised to seventeen (from the initially reported thirteen) the number of Abkhaz troopers killed in the May 18 clash with Georgian Forest Brothers in the village of Repi, Gali district. The fighting was the bloodiest in the recent series of clashes in... MORE

The latest issue of Russia's leading red-brown newspaper, Zavtra, carries an interview with Igor Giorgadze, the suspected organizer of the 1995 bomb attack on Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. Giorgadze, at that time chief of Georgia's State Security Department, and several associates fled directly to Moscow... MORE

Eager to revive its ailing defense industry, Kazakhstan has announced plans to sell branches of several of its military plants to interested investors. Addressing a news conference on May 13, Bekbulat Baigarin, head of the Defense Industry Committee (DIC) at the Ministry of Defense, said... MORE

When the Russian stock markets opened on Monday, May 18 --stock prices plunged by 10 percent in what brokers described as the most abrupt fall in five years. The price of stock in companies such as LUKoil and United Energy Systems fell to almost half... MORE

Russia's Central Bank yesterday raised interest rates from 30 percent to 50 percent in a dramatic move to shore up the ruble, hard hit in recent days by a general backlash against emerging markets worldwide. (NTV, May 19) Announcing the move, Central Bank Chairman Sergei... MORE