"There are two things you can't buy: Friendship and health," President Nursultan Nazarbaev declared -- quoting a traditional Kazakh saying -- in Houston during his trip last week to the U.S. (Reuter, November 20) During his visit, Nazarbaev signed fourteen agreements on cooperation in the... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin devoted his weekly radio address on November 21 to the subject of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Reviewing the "no-necktie summit" he had held several days earlier with Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, Yeltsin described it as heralding "the long-awaited change in relations between Russia... MORE

Returning to Kyiv from a working visit to the U.S., Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma announced that G-7 countries have disbursed $39 million and agreed to allocate another $300 million toward reconstruction of the leaking sarcophagus at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. The disbursement and the... MORE

In an Izvestia interview published over the weekend, Russian deputy prime minister Valery Serov complained of certain CIS countries' "unilateral actions in taking major economic decisions, such as dividing the Caspian continental shelf or turning over large mineral deposits to Western firms." The remark targeted... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin on November 21 promoted Defense Minister Igor Sergeev to the rank of Marshal of Russia. (Russian media, November 21) The move came despite the fact that, earlier this year, the President was said to have done away with this rank (Russian media,... MORE

In separate statements issued on November 21, Georgia's foreign minister Irakli Menagarishvili, deputy foreign minister Malkhaz Kakabadze, and border troops' commander Maj. Gen. Valery Chkheidze, protested the recent move of a Russian border post 1,300 meters inside territory that Georgia considers its own. The post... MORE

After stripping First Deputy Premier Anatoly Chubais of his post as Finance Minister in connection with what has become known in Moscow as the "writers' union" scandal, President Boris Yeltsin followed up at the end of last week by depriving First Deputy Premier Boris Nemtsov... MORE

Only days after it had brokered an apparent settlement to the crisis in the Persian Gulf, Russia was in large part rebuffed over the weekend as it sought to move the UN toward an early easing of sanctions on Iraq. The Russian setback, which came... MORE

An RSM-52V submarine-launched ballistic missile blew up on November 20 just four seconds after it had been launched from the Nenoks test range in northern Russia. The missile, known in the West as the SS-NX-28, is being developed to equip the next generation of Russian... MORE

Georgian defense minister Vardiko Nadibaidze underwent emergency surgery in a Tbilisi urological ward on November 21, and will stay on medical leave for an as yet unspecified period. The First Deputy Minister Zurab Meparishvili said that Nadibaidze had been complaining of health problems for some... MORE