Vincent Cochetel, director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Office for the North Caucasus, was kidnapped at gunpoint in North Ossetia's capital Vladikavkaz last night. Cochetel is a French citizen. The captors' identity and motives are not yet known. (Reuter, January 30) "Big... MORE

The president of Azerbaijan announced yesterday a set of imminent restrictions on gambling casinos, night clubs and drinking establishments -- and more generally on places and forms of entertainment deemed "incompatible with the traditional morality of the Azeri people." The measures were decided on at... MORE

On charges of crossing the Belarus-Lithuania border unlawfully, a Belarusan district court yesterday sentenced Russian Public Television (ORT) Minsk bureau chief Pavel Sheremet to two years in prison, and his cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky to eighteen months. The court suspended the sentence for a one-year probationary... MORE

In two separate incidents this week, Russian servicemen inexplicably took the lives of some of their comrades, prompting Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to warn that such tragedies in the armed forces were repeating themselves "with regular and threatening frequency." The worst incident took place on... MORE

The Chechen government says it knows who was responsible for the murders of six International Red Cross workers in the village of Novye Atagi in December 1996. The killings, carried out on the eve of Chechnya's presidential election, shocked the world. An aide to President... MORE

Plans by Ingushetia's government to hold a referendum on March 1 have provoked a real battle between the republic and the center. Moscow has taken a tough position on this issue, with federal Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov appealing to Russia's Supreme Court to declare the... MORE

The diplomatic drama over Iraq has in recent days taken place amid -- and been a major topic of discussion at -- a series of meetings between Russian and European leaders. The occasion for many of these contacts was the inaugural meeting, for foreign ministers,... MORE

Diplomatic activity around the globe on the Iraq-UN controversy continued at a furious pace yesterday, but no resultant easing in the latest confrontation is evident. Russian deputy foreign minister Viktor Posuvalyuk, in Baghdad on the orders of President Yeltsin, met with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein... MORE

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin is going on vacation on February 2. In a departure from practice, he is not leaving either of his first deputies, Anatoly Chubais and Boris Nemtsov, in charge during his absence. Instead, in a public display of lack of trust in... MORE

The lower house of Kazakhstan's parliament, the Majilis, has rejected in the first reading a bill on the status of Kazakhstan's new capital, Akmola. Their main disagreement lay with Article 6 of the bill, which seeks to protect the capital from disruption by curtailing the... MORE