Gen. Eugene Habiger, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, starts a week-long visit to Russia today at the invitation of the chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF). Habiger is scheduled to visit several SRF bases. Earlier this month, following revelations that some suitcase-sized nuclear... MORE

Aleksandr Nikitin, the retired naval captain accused by Russian authorities of treason for work done under the aegis of a Norwegian environmental group, said yesterday that he would refuse political asylum in Canada. A day earlier visiting Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien had told Russian... MORE

Almazy Rossii-Sakha (ARS, also known as Alrosa) and the South African diamond company De Beers yesterday signed a new agreement under which De Beers will buy up to $1 billion of uncut gems from Russia in the coming year. (BBC, October 21) The agreement comes... MORE

President Yeltsin says he will chair the first meeting of a new roundtable consultative body, due to take place on November 22. Also attending will be the speakers of the two houses of the Russian parliament, the leaders of the various Duma factions, representatives of... MORE

Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze announced yesterday that he will not request at the October 23 CIS summit a prolongation of the Russian troops' "peacekeeping" operation in Abkhazia, unless Moscow provides "absolute guarantees of the unconditional and prompt implementation of the decisions on Abkhazia taken at... MORE

On October 14 the Estonian parliament passed a law allowing for the introduction of import tariffs. This was mainly a result of long-standing pressure from Estonian farmers, unable to compete with the flood of subsidized food imports from the EU. It was also in part... MORE

President Algirdas Brazauskas and parliament chairman Vytautas Landsbergis declared separately yesterday that Russian-Lithuanian relations are becoming "normal" and show prospects of continuing improvement. Brazauskas will in the next few days pay an official visit to Russia. He is the first Baltic president to obtain such... MORE

Various defense officials and independent scientific experts, along with the British, French, and Norwegian governments, say that an August CIA report accusing Russia of a nuclear test on the island of Novaya Zemlya (see Monitor, September 3) incorrectly identified the location of the "seismic event."... MORE

Following talks in Moscow yesterday with Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien, President Boris Yeltsin reaffirmed Russia's commitment to join an international ban on landmines and said that he might travel to Canada in December in order to sign the convention. Yeltsin also announced that Russia... MORE

Retired Russian general Aleksandr Rokhlin has backed away from a weekend call to his supporters to oust the country's "hated regime" by the spring of 1998. He told the Ekho Moskvy radio station yesterday that he was misunderstood: he meant that the government should be... MORE