A Russian government spokesman on February 27 announced that Ukraine and Russia will pursue a coordinated strategy for gaining membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). If correct, this could be another sign of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's willingness to accommodate Russian economic interests --... MORE

The Monitor's correspondent in Saratov reports that plans for President Boris Yeltsin to visit Balakovo, the second largest city in Saratov Oblast, have been abandoned at the last moment. Yeltsin was expected to visit the city to open a new furniture factory set up with... MORE

On March 1, a new law came into effect in Russia that could make bankruptcy a more realistic threat to delinquent companies. (Radio Rossii, March 1) The former law defined a company's financial status in terms of an excess of claims over assets. This allowed... MORE

The big winner in the latest Russian government reshuffle was Andrei Kokoshin, a civilian defense intellectual who had originally made his reputation as a "new thinker" during the Gorbachev period. Kokoshin, named yesterday to the powerful post of Security Council secretary, had been serving since... MORE

Members of the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution on March 2 that warned Iraq of the "severest consequences" should it fail to comply with the February 23 agreement brokered by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. In what was at least a partial defeat... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin launched yet another reorganization of the country's defense and security decisionmaking apparatus yesterday when he abolished the Defense Council and folded the State Military Inspectorate into a resurgent Russian Security Council. (AP, Itar-Tass, March 3) Yesterday's announcements appeared to finalize the... MORE

The lower house of the Russian parliament this morning approved the 1998 federal budget in its final reading. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin appealed to deputies to approve a further cut of $4.5 billion in the draft that the Duma provisionally approved last year. Under the... MORE

Conferring on March 1 and 2 in Istanbul, the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Turkey issued a declaration endorsing a planned east-west corridor as the main export route for Caspian oil. That corridor means, primarily, the projected pipeline from Baku via Georgia... MORE

The UN-sponsored Special Program for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) received a further boost at a two-day meeting in Almaty on February 26 and 27. Present were senior officials from all five Central Asian states, the UN's Economic Commission for Europe, and its Economic... MORE

President Eduard Shevardnadze yesterday told the country on radio that the recent, abortive assaults on him and on UN officers had failed to destabilize Georgia, and did not diminish its reliability as a transit route for Caspian oil. Those had been the goals of the... MORE