The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) on November 15 followed the lead of the Russian Central Bank (RCB) and raised its annual refinancing interest rate from 15 to 25 percent. (Russian agencies, November 15) While the rate hike was, in large measure, a reaction to... MORE

Belarusan prime minister Syarhey Linh's October 31 address to the National Assembly was marked by criticism of Russian and international financial institutions and domestic monopolies, as well as some candid appraisals of rising inflation and Belarus's growing trade deficit. (Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, November 3) According... MORE

Karabakh's prime minister, Leonard Petrosian, made public yesterday Stepanakert's own plan for a step-by-step settlement of the Karabakh conflict. The plan lays out negotiating stages in the following order: definition of Karabakh's political status; determination of Karabakh's borders; withdrawal of Karabakh forces from areas they... MORE

On November 11, U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived on an unofficial visit to Kazakhstan as part of an eight-day trip to the former Soviet Union that included stops in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, and Ukraine. According to the U.S. ambassador in Almaty, the trip... MORE

An Iranian citizen accused by Russian authorities of trying to obtain classified information on Russian missile technology will be expelled from Russia today, Foreign Ministry sources in Moscow indicated yesterday. Criminal proceedings will apparently not be launched against the Iranian, who Russian sources say is... MORE

The embattled mayor of Vladivostok, Viktor Cherepkov, yesterday declared a hunger strike. He said his aim was to attract the attention of both Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the country's procurator general to the state of affairs in Primorsky Krai, where Cherepkov has been embroiled... MORE

Hillary Clinton yesterday completed a tour of five former Soviet republics with a one-day visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv. There she delivered a speech on democracy and independence to a cheering crowd, gathered around the monument to victims of Soviet repression outside the... MORE

Azerbaijan's internal affairs minister, Ramil Usubov, yesterday stated that Alikram Gummatov -- the jailed leader of a 1993 attempt to create a secessionist Talysh republic in southeastern Azerbaijan -- is alive. Usubov denied reports, which originated with the pro-opposition Institute for Peace and Democracy, that... MORE

Moscow, in the person of Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, appeared yesterday to be playing a key role in intense diplomatic maneuvering aimed at defusing the crisis in Iraq. Amid indications that Baghdad is seeking an exit from its confrontation with the UN and the U.S.,... MORE

True to his word, investigative journalist Aleksandr Minkin yesterday published a detailed report of a money-laundering scheme in which First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais is alleged to have offered financial inducements to unnamed commercial banks to take part in a bookkeeping scam. The aim... MORE