The new Russian cabinet is almost complete. The final appointments are expected to be announced today. There is speculation that a place in the cabinet will be found for former Deputy Premier Ivan Rybkin. Rybkin is currently shuttling between Moscow and the Chechen capital of... MORE

The gap between Russia's poorer and richer regions continued to increase last year, according to the deputy director of the All-Russian Living Standards Center, V. Litvinov. (Ekonomika i zhizn, No. 16, 1998, p. 29) Average money incomes across the country as a whole, adjusted for... MORE

Oksana Dmitrieva has given her first interview since being expelled from the Yabloko movement for accepting the post of minister of labor and social security in the new Russian government headed by Sergei Kirienko. Yabloko consistently opposed Kirienko's candidacy for prime minister and issued a... MORE

As of yesterday, there had still been no official comment from senior Russian officials in Moscow on the U.S. Senate's April 29 vote approving a first round of NATO enlargement. That silence may have been a product simply of Russia's extended holiday weekend. However, speaking... MORE

Comments by Japan's foreign minister this week suggest that Japan's political leadership may be counting on improved relations with Russia--and especially on progress in the Kuril Islands territorial dispute--to help Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's government surmount increasingly serious political problems at home. Speaking to reporters... MORE

The armed clashes in and near Dushanbe, which began on April 29, culminated on May 1 and 2 with fighting in the Tajik capital itself. Government forces using armor and artillery managed to evict the opposition detachments which had seized control of the eastern part... MORE

Two Turkish and two Georgian warships exercised jointly in Black Sea waters off Georgia's ports Poti and Batumi from April 30 through May 2. Code-named Caucasus-Amazonia-98, the exercises involved joint search and rescue operations to assist and escort ships in distress. The participating Turkish ships,... MORE

Following an internal investigation, Georgia's State Security Ministry assessed as "unsatisfactory" the performance of some of its departments in connection with last February's assassination attempt against President Eduard Shevardnadze. At a senior staff meeting it was accordingly decided to dismiss the heads of both the... MORE

According to Georgian reports, some of them from State Security Ministry officials, Georgian "self-defense units" seized control of the villages Saberio and Khumushkuri in Abkhazia on May 2 and 3, respectively. The Georgian armed groups are said to have raised the Georgian flag and to... MORE

By a decree signed on May 1, the recently elected President Robert Kocharian ordered the return of German art objects, old books and manuscripts representing Armenia's share of the Soviet loot in Germany. Kocharian tasked the Internal Affairs and State Security Ministry and the Foreign... MORE