Growing investment demand is helping the engineering branches of Russia's industry fare better than anticipated this year. Gross investment in fixed capital increased by 7.8 percent year-on-year in July to bring the growth in the cumulative figure for the first seven months to 5.4 percent.... MORE

A woman was killed and five other people wounded yesterday when a bomb exploded in the Chechen government headquarters in Djohar (Grozny), the republic's capital. The blast took place as the republic's leadership held a meeting on the third floor of the building. Among those... MORE

On August 31, the newspaper Kommersant published an interview with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. In the interview, which was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Khasavyurt agreements that ended the first Chechen war, Maskhadov said that the current situation in Chechnya is... MORE

The World Bank wants Tbilisi to get tough with Baku in the negotiations on the transit of Azerbaijani gas from the Shah-Deniz field to Turkey via Georgia. Some of that gas is earmarked for Georgia's own use. A World Bank confidential letter, the contents of... MORE

The removal of Rem Vyakhirev as the head of Gazprom this past June gave rise to hopes that the giant semi-state owned natural gas monopoly would at a minimum be made more transparent and possibly even radically restructured. There are a growing number of signs,... MORE

In addition to Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller's reported less-than-deep commitment to restructuring Gazprom, there are signs that neither the gas giant's new management nor the government are committed either to a radical housecleaning within the gas giant's management, which has been accused of large-scale asset... MORE

The three Baltic states' NATO candidacy is advancing not only on the political front (see the Monitor, July 30, August 27) but on the military level as well. Three joint exercises under NATO aegis and other measures to enhance military preparedness are currently underway in... MORE

From August 26 through September 2, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is overseeing the largest military exercise held in Belarus since 1991. Code-named Neman 2001, the exercise uses four training ranges, the main one of which, near Hrodna, is situated only a few kilometers from the intersection... MORE

With parliament reconvening on September 4, the parliamentary election campaign getting officially underway in October and the vote scheduled for March 2002, Ukraine has begun a new political season. In several addresses recently, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has launched it, celebrated the country's Independence Day... MORE

Ukraine may soon see three major pro-presidential parties merge. In spite of initial uncertainty about the viability of the bloc of four parties--the People's Democratic Party (PDP), the Agrarian Party (APU), the Party of Regions (UPR), and Labor Ukraine (see the Monitor, July 27)--leaders of... MORE