The Russian government and Central Bank have announced new moves aimed at protecting the ruble against the speculation that has so disrupted other emerging markets in recent months. The moves were announced yesterday after First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anatoly Chubais held a... MORE

Turkey refuses to attend border talks with Armenia if the Armenian delegation includes officers of Russia's border troops or if documents to be submitted by the Armenian side include references to "CIS borders" or to the Russian Federation, which is not Turkey's neighbor. The commander... MORE

Karabakh's foreign minister, Naira Melkumian, yesterday confirmed that the Karabakh leadership has rejected a "stage-by-stage" settlement plan, which had been delivered in Stepanakert on November 7 by the U.S., Russian, and French co-chairmen of the OSCE mediating group. Karabakh president Arkady Gukasian expressed concern that... MORE

Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka has appointed Maj. Gen. Ivan Yurkin to the post of deputy chairman of the Russia-Belarus Union's Security Committee. According to Lukashenka's decree, the committee is being created under a joint decision of Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Lukashenka. Yurkin's ranking as... MORE

The Estonian-Latvian-Lithuanian joint battalion -- BaltBat -- yesterday launched its "Baltic Trial I" exercise at Latvia's Adazi training grounds. Military personnel from Britain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are also participating. Combining peacekeeping and combat components, the exercise is being described as BaltBat's "graduation test,"... MORE

Aleksei Yablokov, a prominent environmentalist, was quoted yesterday as saying that there are 700 atomic demolition munitions -- or "nuclear suitcases" -- in Russia today. He believes that they are under strict military control, but said that reports of the sale of such weapons to... MORE

In an effort to promote investment possibilities in their country, high-ranking government officials and energy experts from Turkmenistan met on November 4-5 with major U.S. energy companies and business representatives in Houston, Texas. The Houston talks follow an October 30 meeting in Ashgabat between the... MORE

The privatization of the Slavneft Oil Company could be the next prize contested by the financial-industrial groups led by former Russian Security Council deputy secretary Boris Berezovsky and former deputy prime minister Vladimir Potanin. (Moskovskie novosti, October 20) The fact that Slavneft is jointly owned... MORE

Estonian prime minister Mart Siimann and Bank of Estonia governor Vahur Kraft signed a memorandum of understanding with a visiting IMF delegation on November 7. (BNS, November 7; Russian agencies, November 8) Although the memorandum, which covers economic policy for the remainder of 1997 and... MORE

In a terse decree issued on November 8 President Boris Yeltsin fired the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, Adm. Feliks Gromov, and dismissed him from military service. The action came one day after a naval mine and torpedo storage depot blew up in Vladivostok --... MORE