The Monitor has received a copy of a protocol of intentions signed on October 13 in Grozny. The signatories on the document are Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov; the well-known British businessman and public figure, Lord McAlpine; the executive director of Peregrin Investment Holdings, Francis Pike;... MORE

Briefing journalists last week, President Yeltsin's representative in Saratov Oblast, Petr Kamshilov, gave the presidential seal of approval to the region's pioneering land legislation. The bill, adopted in the first reading by the Oblast Duma on October 22, legalizes the free sale of agricultural land,... MORE

Estonian foreign minister Toomas Ilves yesterday issued a statement describing Russia's proposal for a Baltic regional security pact as "anachronistic in the new Europe," because regional arrangements contradict the principle of indivisible security. The Baltic is part of the Euroatlantic space, the security of which... MORE

A total of 10,000 electric power workers are on an indefinite strike in Primorsky Krai. They are demanding payment of up to ten months of wage arrears. The protesters are planning today to picket the town hall in the provincial capital, Vladivostok, and have threatened... MORE

The Moscow police yesterday withdrew its guards from the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Archive officials say they can no longer afford to pay for protection, though there was speculation that the city police had taken the action in an effort to force the... MORE

Last month's decision of the Russian Duma's Communist faction to abandon a no-confidence vote in the government has stirred dissent within the Russian Communist Party (CPRF). Central Committee member Leonid Petrovsky told the newspaper Pravda there was "no denying the existence of the gap" between... MORE

Oil piped from the Caspian Sea arrived on the borders of Chechnya at midnight on November 2, Russian agencies reported the following day. It now begins its journey across Chechen territory and on to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, whence it will be carried... MORE

Kazakhstan is currently enduring its most politically significant labor protests since independence. Fifteen hundred workers at the Achisay Polymetal Plant in Kentau, Southern Kazakhstan, struck on October 1, demanding payment of ten-month wage arrears totaling 100 million tenge ($1.35 million) (Kazakh Commercial TV, October 24)... MORE

In his first statements on returning to Baku from internal exile, former president Abulfaz Elchibey ranked "Karabakh, refugees, and consolidation of the opposition" as Azerbaijan's first and foremost problems. Regarding Karabakh, Elchibey called for a "military-political solution;" rejected the OSCE mediators' stage-by-stage settlement plan, recently... MORE

The Russian and Ukrainian navies completed on November 1 the joint naval exercise Peace Channel-97 in the Black Sea off Crimea. Ukraine's first deputy defense minister, Col. Gen. Ivan Bizhan, commanded the exercise aboard the Russian flagship Kerch, assisted by Russia's naval forces chief of... MORE