As anticipated (see Monitor, December 9, 18), Arturas Paulauskas won a substantial plurality of the votes in the December 21 first round of Lithuania's presidential election. According to preliminary data issued yesterday, Paulauskas garnered 45 percent of the vote, followed by the Lithuanian-American ecologist, Valdas... MORE

According to Russian defense minister Igor Sergeev, creation of a "single defense space" of Russia and Belarus, and the agreements to that effect signed on December 19 in Minsk, represent the military dimension of the Russia-Belarus Union. Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka similarly stated on the... MORE

The Kremlin's rapprochement with Lukashenka is also advancing rapidly on the political track. Last week, President Boris Yeltsin invited Lukashenka to visit Russia's Yaroslav Oblast "at any suitable time," in addition to the two president's regular meeting as heads of the Russia-Belarus Union. The Kremlin's... MORE

In an article published on December 17 in the Uzbek newspaper "Hurriyat," a leading Uzbek journalist takes a swipe at the new draft media law proposed by the government. The draft law, published in major Uzbek papers last month, details the rights and responsibilities of... MORE

At the OSCE's year-end Ministerial Council, held in Copenhagen on December 18-19, Armenia twice exercised its right of veto against a final document on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. First submitted as a Council statement, then resubmitted as a statement by the OSCE's Chairman-in-Office,... MORE

Addressing a senior staff meeting of the republic's KGB (still so named) on the 80th anniversary of its creation, Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka remarked that "the [political] opposition's increasingly frequent references to the KGB indicate that the organization has regained its bearings." The president described... MORE

An international conference on Chechnya opened over the weekend in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. (Itar-Tass, December 20) This is the fourth conference under the Hague Initiative. It is being chaired by President Mintimer Shaimiev and attended by Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov. Shaimiev said talks... MORE

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading on December 19 a bill on "On the Supreme Soviet of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea." Crimea is Ukraine's only autonomous republic. The bill would reduce the Crimean parliament from a permanently-sitting body to one meeting for... MORE

Yeltsin's December 19 remarks, ironically, occurred only hours before the start of a hostage-taking incident in Moscow that left one member of Russia's security services dead. The incident began on the evening of December 19, when a Russian man seized a Swedish diplomat as he... MORE

It appears that the director of the Federal Border Service (FBS), Gen. Andrei Nikolaev, has submitted his resignation once too often. On December 18, President Boris Yeltsin accepted Nikolaev's latest letter and dismissed him from the service. He appointed Col. Gen. Aleksandr Tymko -- who... MORE