President Boris Yeltsin is due to meet today with Gennady Seleznev, Communist Speaker of the State Duma, in a fresh bid to resolve the crisis Yeltsin himself provoked when he sacked the entire government on March 23. Yeltsin's nominee for prime minister, thirty-five-year-old Sergei Kirienko,... MORE

With hopes once again of getting the 1993 START-2 treaty ratified, President Boris Yeltsin yesterday presented supporting documents to the State Duma. Items of interest in those papers: first, a U.S./Russian protocol extending by five years the treaty's destruction timetable, and, second, materials dealing with... MORE

Meanwhile, in recent days both countries have given hints of proposals they intend to make during the summit that could depart from the expected agenda. On April 9, a Russian Foreign Ministry source was quoted as saying that Russia may seek the signing not of... MORE

The buildup has continued over the past few days for this weekend's rescheduled summit meeting between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. The informal meeting, to be held in the Japanese resort town of Kawana, had originally been scheduled for April... MORE

A Sukhoi-25 fighter-bomber of the Russian "peacekeeping" forces in Tajikistan crashed on April 11, killing its two pilots -- a lieutenant-colonel and a captain -- both of whom had a long experience of flying in remote mountainous areas. The plane was overflying an area known... MORE

President Robert Kocharian -- sworn in and took office on April 9 -- nominated Armen Darbinian as prime minister the next day. Darbinian will now, under the constitution, put together a cabinet of ministers and submit its program to the parliament. Born in Armenia in... MORE

President Haidar Aliev told Russia's acting Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Rybkin in Baku that Azerbaijan "strongly objects" to the presence of Russian military bases in Armenia and Georgia. Aliev remonstrated also against Moscow's refusal to extradite Azerbaijan's former chief-of-staff, Major General Shahin Musaev, as well... MORE

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Hennady Udovenko announced on April 9 that has submitted his resignation to President Leonid Kuchma in order to take up a seat in the country's parliament. Udovenko was elected as a parliamentary deputy on the party list of the Rukh [Ukrainian Popular... MORE

Belarusan President Alyaksandr Lukashenka rules out the proposals, recently aired in Minsk, regarding free parliamentary elections and possible modifications to the existing constitution. Meeting with West German diplomat Hans-Georg Wieck, head of the OSCE's consultative-monitoring group for Belarus, Lukashenka rejected "insinuations" about pre-term parliamentary elections,... MORE

Yaroslavl Oblast Governor Anatoly Lisitsyn flew to Djohar (formerly Grozny) on April 11 for talks with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. In one of the main topics for discussion, Lisitsyn has asked the president to take part in the search for thirty-six servicemen missing in action... MORE