Russian Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko told a TV interviewer on Sunday night that he hopes to be able to work constructively with the Duma and that "witch hunts" and arguments over his appointment can now be left behind. (RTR, April 26) Kirienko is due to... MORE

Turkmen President Saparmurat Niazov completed on April 25 his first-ever official visit to Washington as part of a week-long trip to the United States. U.S. President Bill Clinton and Niazov signed a joint statement emphasizing "rapid development" of Caspian energy sources, of export pipelines to... MORE

On April 25 Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Georgia of condoning and even encouraging the "use of force" and "terrorist attacks" against Russian troops in Abkhazia. Complaining of "gross anti-Russian sallies in the Georgian media and on the part of Georgian officials," the Russian note demanded... MORE

Presidents Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan, Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia and Suleyman Demirel of Turkey held a one-day summit yesterday in the Turkish Black Sea port Trabzon. The closed-door discussions focused on the export of the "main" Azerbaijani oil via Georgia and Turkey to international markets.... MORE

Some 7,000 Belarusans demonstrated in Minsk on April 25 at the call of the Popular Front to commemorate the 1986 Chornobyl disaster in neighboring Ukraine, the fallout from which contaminated Belarus. Marchers carried the banned national colors and placards which spoke of "two disasters--Chornobyl and... MORE

Petter Langseth, the head of the Economic Development Institute at the World Bank, told the Yale conference that Ukraine is one of the fifteen countries in which his unit is running anticorruption drives. Their strategy is to encourage pressure on politicians from NGOs, journalists and... MORE

Analysts and government officials from Ukraine and the United States gathered at Yale University on 24-25 April presented a grim picture of an economy in the grip of organized crime and corrupt politicians. Economic reform has made only slow progress in Ukraine. Despite the introduction... MORE

Rules for selecting the firm to assess the initial value of the second privatization tender for Russia's Svyazinvest telecommunications holding company were recently announced. These show that the government is taking steps to avoid a repeat of the scandal that followed Svyazinvest's first privatization tender... MORE

Discord among UN Security Council members over policy toward Iraq, so evident during two recent crises involving Baghdad and UN weapons inspectors, seems likely to resurface again today as the Council begins its twice-yearly review of sanctions imposed on Iraq. Today's deliberations follow a move... MORE

The ownership and management of United Energy Systems, Russia's electricity monopoly, underwent further confusion in mid-April. This confusion contributed to the decision, announced on April 15 by Aleksei Sannikov, representative of the state's equity interest in UES, to postpone the appointment of UES's chief executive... MORE