Russian president Boris Yeltsin left Moscow yesterday for a two-week holiday in the Valdai lakeland region northwest of Moscow. Yeltsin's spokesman said that the president's visit to Chechnya, originally planned to take place this month, had been postponed. The decision was taken in the wake... MORE

Duma speaker Gennady Seleznev says the Duma is working on a proposal for a coalition government that will be submitted to Yeltsin by January 14. (ORT, December 26) Yeltsin reflected the same mood in an end-of-year radio address on December 26. Unusually introspective, the president... MORE

Generally considered "the party of power," the People's Democratic Party may more accurately be described as the party of a weak and insecure force, one that will struggle for political survival in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The PDP is a party of notables, its core... MORE

Although the Russian Navy has not built a new surface warship from the keel up since the collapse of the Soviet Union, several new submarines have been developed. Yesterday the director of the Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Aleksandrov, announced that work would begin... MORE

Russian Security Council deputy secretary Yury Deryabin met on December 22 in Moscow with an Iranian deputy foreign minister in order to discuss strengthening cooperation between the two countries in the Caucasus and Caspian regions. (Itar-Tass, December 22) Those talks follow on the heels of... MORE

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov yesterday called on UN weapons inspectors to speed up their work in Iraq in order to make possible an early lifting of sanctions on Baghdad. Primakov also reiterated Moscow's long-standing position that the crisis in the Persian Gulf should be... MORE

Richard Bliss, the 29-year-old American telecommunications engineer arrested late last month by Russia's security services on espionage charges (see Monitor, December 2, 5, 9), has been allowed to leave Russia over the holidays. According to a U.S. State Department spokesman, the deal was worked out... MORE

President Yeltsin has suspended a recent decision enacted by Aleksandr Rutskoi, his former vice president who is now Governor of Kursk Oblast. According to Russian Television, Yeltsin has barred Rutskoi's efforts to give the oblast bank a monopoly over federal budget transfers. Rutskoi was elected... MORE

Five Polish aid workers were revealed yesterday to have been kidnapped in Chechnya, bringing to ten the number of foreign citizens being held hostage in the republic. (RTR, December 23) Meanwhile, the British press reports that Pakistani politician and former cricketer Imran Khan has been... MORE

General Vladimir Vasiliev, the head of the Interior Ministry's organized crime unit, has repeatedly said that 30-40 percent of the Russian economy is under the control of organized crime. Kommersant-daily journalist Igor Svinarenko went to the Urals city of Zlatoust to investigate the extent to... MORE