Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Acting Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov yesterday each called for ratification by Russia's parliament of the START II strategic arms reduction treaty. According to the Russian presidential press service, Yeltsin exhorted both the Defense and Foreign Ministries to cooperate with Russia's... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin dispatched an envoy to Belgrade yesterday for what was described as a continuation of Moscow's efforts to settle peacefully the crisis in Kosovo. Igor Ivanov, a Russian deputy foreign minister, is scheduled to meet today with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and... MORE

Russia's bankers, with great concern, are awaiting the outcome of the Kirienko confirmation hearing. Uppermost in their minds are decisions over the allocation of budget funds and possible changes in the terms of the Rosneft sale. Even though the system of "authorized banks" was supposed... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin met with the speakers of the two houses of the Russian parliament yesterday and agreed to convene roundtable talks. The talks, to be held on April 7 with politicians from across the spectrum, will focus on the composition of the next... MORE

On April 3, Prime Minister-designate Sergei Kirienko is due to address the State Duma in a bid to persuade the deputies to accept his nomination to lead the government. On April 1, Kirienko addressed the Federation Council, and provided some important insights into his emergent... MORE

A working agreement on the protection of Russians in Kazakhstan and of Kazakhs in Russia was signed at a working meeting of the two governments' human rights commissions on March 23 and 24 in Akmola. Apart from this bilateral agreement, the commissions also discussed possibly... MORE

Kocharian's victory poses special problems for Baku, as the Armenian president-elect, a native of Karabakh, presided over that unrecognized republic's secession from Azerbaijan. Moreover, Kocharian -- like Karabakh's resident natives in general -- is technically a citizen of Azerbaijan in the eyes of international law.... MORE

Armenia's Central Electoral Commission yesterday completed the ballot counting and declared Robert Kocharian the winner in the March 30 presidential runoff. Kocharian, who ran as prime minister and acting president, garnered 59 percent of the vote against 41 percent for his challenger, former Communist party... MORE

Moscow and Minsk are today marking the first anniversary of the Russia-Belarus Union, founded by Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka on April 2, 1997. In a written address to the two countries, Lukashenka stated that their one-year-old Union stems from a "glorious Soviet past"... MORE

Russia's Federation Council, which includes many appointees of President Boris Yeltsin, adopted yesterday the text of an address to Russian journalists and mass media leaders, asking them to be more "objective about" and "respectful of" certain presidents of CIS member countries. The president of Belarus... MORE