Support from an unexpected corner came yesterday for President Boris Yeltsin's campaign to appoint Sergei Kirienko as prime minister. State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev, a leading member of the Communist party and former editor of its newspaper Pravda, met with the president yesterday. Immediately afterwards,... MORE

According to a report published last week in a Russian daily, the secretary of Russia's powerful Security Council, Andrei Kokoshin, is gearing up for what is likely to be an intense turf battle with the heads of the country's various "power structures." (Kommersant-Vlast, April 7)... MORE

According to President Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan "follows Ataturk's precepts in developing as a secular independent state." The Uzbek state "honors our ancestors' religion as a factor in the spiritual development of the nation, along the model set by Ataturk," Karimov declared at a joint briefing... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry and the unrecognized "foreign ministry" of Abkhazia issued parallel statements yesterday. In them, Georgia was held responsible for recent "terrorist activity" in Abkhaz-controlled territory. Ten Russian soldiers were wounded and two Abkhaz troopers killed in three incidents from April 5-10. Moscow and... MORE

Meeting on April 11 in Baku, the United Azerbaijan Association's Central Council expanded its membership to 143, decided to launch a press organ ("United Azerbaijan") and appointed its editors, created a youth branch of the UAA, and approved a directive of the organization's leader, Abulfaz... MORE

Latvia's coalition government will try to carry on even as a minority government because "its collapse would suggest that Latvian governments can be changed under external pressure. This could cause major problems for any successor government," Prime Minister Guntars Krasts stated yesterday. The government lost... MORE

Former Federal Border Service chief Andrei Nikolaev won a convincing 62.5 percent of the votes in a by-election in southern Moscow's Orekhovo-Borisovsky constituency on April 12. (RTR, April 13) The seat became vacant when Irina Khakamada was appointed to the Russian government at the end... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin yesterday praised the performance of Nikolai Bordyuzha, the recently named director of Russia's Federal Border Guard Service, describing him as a great improvement over his predecessor, General Andrei Nikolaev. Yeltsin's pointed remarks came one day after Nikolaev won an impressive victory... MORE

The Communist-dominated Duma clearly feels under no pressure to compromise at present. The Communists and their nationalist and agrarian allies are insisting that they will not support Kirienko on a second vote. This is only to be expected. It is no guide to how the... MORE

Disquiet grows in Moscow as awareness sinks in that Yeltsin had no idea when he sacked Viktor Chernomyrdin's government three weeks ago with what or whom to replace it. Yeltsin's visit to Japan has already been put off due to the government crisis and Moscow... MORE