Talking to NTV yesterday, Yeltsin backed down from his earlier threat that he would reshuffle the cabinet following today's state-of-the-nation speech. (NTV, February 16) Last month, he threatened that "one or two" cabinet ministers would lose their posts, giving rise to speculation that the "young... MORE

Delivering his annual state-of-the-nation address to the Russian parliament this morning, President Boris Yeltsin said economic growth remains the focal point of current government policy. Much of the hard work has already been done, he said, as shown by the fact that Russia's economy grew... MORE

Yeltsin touched briefly on foreign policy at the end of today's speech. He called for a diplomatic solution in Iraq and stressed that Russia remains firmly opposed to the use of force to resolve the crisis. Asked by nationalist parliamentarian Vladimir Zhirinovsky to use his... MORE

Murat Auezov, co-chairman of the leftist opposition group Azamat, has accepted an offer by President Nursultan Nazarbaev to head the Information and Social Concord Department of the Almaty regional administration. To the surprise of local journalists, Auezov nevertheless told a press conference that he would... MORE

Germany's embassy in Georgia announced over the weekend that the German government has given President Eduard Shevardnadze a Mercedes armored car to replace the one disabled in the February 9 assassination attempt. In a statement from Bonn, made public in Tbilisi, German Foreign Minister Klaus... MORE

Hundreds of members of the Belarusan Popular Front's youth wing -- the Young Front -- marched in Minsk on Valentine Day, February 14, under the slogan "I love NATO." Representatives of the demonstrators stopped at Western embassies to hand over statements that the Belarusan democratic... MORE

As anticipated (see Monitor, January 29) Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliev has dismissed Foreign Minister Hasan Hasanov from his post. Aliev announced his decision on February 14 while on a visit to Turkey, before making it public in Azerbaijan. On the previous day, a special investigative... MORE

A retired officer, Colonel Pavel Popovskikh, 51, former head of the intelligence division of the Airborne Troops command, has been formally charged with organizing and participating in the murder in 1994 of journalist Dmitry Kholodov. (NTV, February 12) Kholodov, a 27-year-old journalist with the newspaper... MORE

Fifteen members of the former OMON detachment in Riga are going on trial before a district court in the Latvian capital today. The crack unit of the USSR Internal Affairs Ministry was involved in attacks on Latvian customs and police posts during 1990-91, when Moscow... MORE

Russian Security Council Secretary Ivan Rybkin has criticized the Russian government in general, and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in particular, for Russia's failure to honor its financial commitments to Chechnya. In a television interview marking President Aslan Maskhadov's first year in office, Rybkin warned that,... MORE