Over sixty thousand signatures have been collected in Karachaevo-Cherkessia on a petition calling on Russian President Boris Yeltsin to order elections for the position of head of the North Caucasus republic. (Nezavisimaya gazeta, February 24) Karachaevo-Cherkessia is today the only republic in Russia whose leader... MORE

Latvian Foreign Minister Valdis Birkavs yesterday declined Russian President Boris Yeltsin's proposals for a political treaty or charter that would parallel the U.S.-Baltic Charter. Birkavs announced at a briefing that Yeltsin had advanced the proposals last week in a letter to Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis.... MORE

The congress of Chechen war veterans, convened on February 21 at the initiative of Chechen Prime Minister Shamil Basaev, was expected to condemn Salman Raduev's claim of responsibility for the assassination attempt on Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. When Raduev first made his claim, Chechnya's prosecutor... MORE

Chechnya's new law on firearms, passed by parliament last November, came into effect on February 25. It bans the carrying of automatic weapons without the express permission of the civil and military authorities. It does not yet extend to pistols and knives. (Izvestia, February 26)... MORE

Magomed Zakaev, son of the minister of trade in Chechnya's former Moscow-backed government and nephew of the head of that government, Doku Zavgaev, was kidnapped yesterday in Moscow. The kidnappers say they will exchange the son for his father, Akhmed Zakaev, who is considered, in... MORE

The Kremlin announced on February 23 that Russian President Boris Yeltsin will travel to the Japanese city of Kawana, a seaside resort, on April 11-13 for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. The meeting will be the second informal summit between the two men.... MORE

Despite Moscow's lip-service to the importance of economic ties with her giant Asian partners, Russia's trade with China and India has fallen below the level attained in the Soviet era. The existing pattern still derives from Soviet-era commodity-swaps, and grandiose plans for Russian involvement in... MORE

A Russian government delegation traveled to Syria over the weekend to take part in a session of a joint Russian-Syrian commission for trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation. The Russian delegation was led by Justice Minister Sergei Stepashin and included Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov.... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin opened a much-hyped meeting of the full Russian government this morning with a demand to know "who is guilty" for the country's economic problems. He called on cabinet members for an account of their stewardship and warned in a dramatic flourish that... MORE

Recent conflicting statements by two of Russia's highest-ranking officers cast some doubt on what has long been taken as fact in the West: that Moscow is protected from missile attack by a cordon of nuclear-armed interceptor missiles. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty allowed both... MORE