Talks in Brussels this week between Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders from both the European Union and NATO have produced headlines suggesting that growing international solidarity in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington may be having the... MORE

President Vladimir Putin has released former Prime Minister, and presidential counselor-in-waiting, Yevgeny Primakov from the post of plenipotentiary representative of Russia for the Transdniester settlement negotiations. By the same decree, Putin abolished Russia's State Commission on Transdniester, a joint governmental and parliamentary body, of which... MORE

On October 4, for the fourth time, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma vetoed a proposed law on elections that the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) had passed, most recently, on September 13. Leaving Ukraine without election rules just six months before the Rada elections (which are scheduled for... MORE

On September 27, Ukraine's former Deputy Premier Yulia Tymoshenko called on former Premier Viktor Yushchenko to form a single bloc of the opposition together with her National Salvation Forum (NSF) and the Socialist Party (SPU). "There is no time to think anymore," she said. "It's... MORE

Despite Moscow's recent enlistment in the U.S. antiterror coalition and a more general improvement in ties between Russia and the United States since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Russian government did not hesitate to defy American wishes this week when it signed a long-negotiated... MORE

On October 1-2 in Dushanbe, the heads of intelligence and security services of CIS member countries held an ordinary meeting with an extraordinary agenda. Initiated by Moscow, it focused on ensuring Russian control over Central Asian countries' cooperation with American forces, in anticipation of antiterrorist... MORE

President Eduard Shevardnadze embarked yesterday on a visit to the United States in spite of mounting Russian pressures on Georgia. Those pressures are currently taking three main forms: fomenting trouble in Abkhazia, digging in at the Gudauta military base and accusing Georgia of collusion with... MORE

On September 28 and October 1, President Islam Karimov reaffirmed Uzbekistan's readiness to support American retaliatory strikes on terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Chairing a meeting of Uzbekistan's Security Council on October 1, Karimov was shown on state television as stating that his country "supports the... MORE

Racing against the onset of winter weather, salvage operators contracted by the Russian government began final preparations yesterday for the difficult and potentially risky operation by which they hope to raise the lost Russian nuclear submarine Kursk. Yesterday's resumption of the salvage operation came after... MORE

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's aide, confirmed yesterday that the federal authorities have been in contact with representatives of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. There is no reason, he added, that these contacts should not continue. Yastrzhembsky told reporters that the seventy-two-hour deadline Putin announced,... MORE