In Ashgabat yesterday, Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Saparmurad Niazov signed an agreement on Turkmen gas deliveries to Ukraine, envisaging 20 billion cubic meters annually from 1998 to 2005. Pricing will depend on Russian transit fees, and the deliveries themselves are subject to Russia's consent to... MORE

Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev yesterday cautioned NATO that Russia may create a Russian-Belarusan joint command and deploy Russian troops in western areas of Belarus. The reasoning behind this: a countermove to NATO's enlargement. Sergeev spoke in Rendsburg, northern Germany, while visiting a NATO headquarters... MORE

On January 28 Ukraine's Information Ministry suspended -- indefinitely -- the legal registration and publishing authorization of the Pravda Ukrainy newspaper. This move came after the Justice Ministry and the Prosecutor General's Office determined that the newspaper's registration last August had been unlawful. At that... MORE

Russian authorities are belatedly providing information about an accident onboard a Northern Fleet nuclear submarine this past Monday. An officer on that vessel died from exposure to toxic gas. The incident occurred at a base on Zapadnaya Litsa, a fjord just 55 kilometers from the... MORE

NATO enlargement and NATO-Russian cooperation appeared to be the major topics of talks in Bonn over the last two days. The talks -- held between Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev and his German counterpart Volker Ruehe -- were also aimed at boosting bilateral military cooperation... MORE

The government commission charged with determining the authenticity of the remains of Russia's last czar and his family holds its final meeting today in Moscow. The commission is said to be satisfied that the bones discovered in Sverdlovsk Oblast in 1979 are indeed those of... MORE

"They're trying as hard as they can to push us out of Russia!" Mukhu Aliev, Speaker of the Popular Assembly (Dagestan's parliament) told a session of the legislature this week. Aliev said he had little hope for a swift stabilization of the situation. He called... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin yesterday chaired the latest meeting of the "Big Four" (president, prime minister and the speakers of the two houses of parliament). (RTR, January 29) These meetings are fast becoming institutionalized. Yeltsin proposed yesterday that in the future they should work to... MORE

At the end of last year, Yeltsin promised to devote all his energies to getting parliamentary approval for the government's 1998 federal budget. By institutionalizing the "Big Four" and making pleasant noises to the opposition yesterday, he seems to have secured their agreement that the... MORE

On the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's arrival in Europe, Russia continues to play a key role in the frenetic diplomatic maneuvering that has accompanied the latest crisis in the Persian Gulf. Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov was the object of some... MORE