This year, Russia's Republic of Tatarstan began the first stage in a long-awaited operation to switch the written Tatar language from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. The past seventy years have seen no fewer than three reforms of the script in which the Tatar... MORE

A conflict that could lead to further confrontation between the regions and the federal center erupted last weak in Krasnoyarsk Krai. The regional governor, Aleksandr Lebed, who ran for president in 1996 and then became secretary of the Kremlin's Security Council, refused to accept the... MORE

On September 21, a special electoral college elected Arnold Ruutel as head of state for a five-year term. Ruutel, 73, succeeds President Lennart Meri, 72, whose second term of office expires in October, and who is barred by the constitution from seeking a third. There... MORE

On September 20, the Russian state television's Odnako program went to great lengths accusing Georgia of collusion with Chechen rebels and "international terrorism." The "experts," interviewed on the program to make that case, included Igor Giorgadze, the presumed organizer of the 1995 assassination attempt, in... MORE

The international tumult surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States has pushed several potentially significant developments in Russian-Chinese relations to the back pages. The most important of these was Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's six-day visit to Russia earlier this month, during which... MORE

If Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to Russia and his meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was a success on the trade front, it was unclear if the same was true of his talks on September 11 with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting... MORE

The Kremlin's apparent plans to support, if not actively participate in, the U.S.-led campaign against international terrorism would seem to have growing support among ordinary Russians. A telephone survey carried out yesterday during the weekly Itogi program on TV-6 found that 39 percent of the... MORE

At the same time, some Russia politicians oppose the United States in its proclaimed antiterrorism battle and even question whether Osama bin Laden was responsible for the September 11 attacks. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), said late last week... MORE

With Uzbekistan's eager cooperation, notwithstanding strong initial objections from Moscow, the United States has begun deploying air power and some ground force personnel in that country. It is still unclear which Central Asian country or countries opened their air space to the American planes en... MORE

Deliberations between Russia and the United States centered on Russia's possible role in a U.S.-led antiterrorist coalition continued in both Washington and Moscow this week. But the talks appeared to produce more rhetoric than substance and gave little indication of whether the two countries are... MORE