Russian and Japanese delegations negotiating an agreement to regulate fishing rights for Japanese boats in the waters off the disputed Kuril Islands have failed to finalize a document for signing at the November 1-2 meeting between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Japanese prime minister Ryutaro... MORE

A French health journal, Univers Sante, has reported that as least 500,000 Kazakhs were contaminated by the Soviet nuclear tests carried out in Kazakhstan between 1949 and 1989. Professor Christian Chenal, director of a Franco-Kazakh study program, told the journal that many inhabitants of villages... MORE

Ukraine's former president, Leonid Kravchuk, and former prime minister Yevhen Marchuk have joined forces with each other and with the United Social-Democrat Party in a potentially strong challenge to President Leonid Kuchma's camp. At the USDP's congress over the weekend, Kravchuk and Marchuk accepted two... MORE

Tajikistan's government today released 58 political detainees, some of them held since 1992. Opposition chairman Saidabdullo Nuri and the government's chief delegate to the National Reconciliation Commission, Abdulmajid Dostiev, attended the releasing ceremony. The government still holds nearly 700 political detainees, eligible for release under... MORE

Russia's Communists have backed off their threat to call a vote of no confidence in the government, and observers say they now doubt the vote will take place. A plenum of the Communist Party's Central Committee voted over the weekend to postpone a decision on... MORE

Aman Tuleev has been re-elected governor of western Siberia's Kemerovo oblast. Turnout in yesterday's election was 53 percent and Tuleev won 94.6 percent of the votes cast. He ran against two token opposition candidates, both supported by the nationalist "Popular Power" movement in order to... MORE

Formally, Russia abolished all oil export quotas and duties -- at the insistence of the IMF -- in July, 1996. In practice, because the Russian government continues to ration access to pipelines, a de facto quota system is still in operation. The new allocations for... MORE

Unnamed officials in Russian president Boris Yeltsin's administration were quoted on October 17 as saying that recent statements by Yeltsin critical of the U.S. were "not accidental" and reflect a reorientation of Russian foreign policy away from the U.S. and toward Europe. They claimed that... MORE

The profit in selling arms to a foreign government does not end after the initial delivery, and Moscow is beginning to reap the added benefits from its mid-1990's entry into the Southeast Asian arms market. It was at that time that Russia sold 18 MiG-29... MORE

Some 2,000 supporters of the opposition rallied yesterday in Minsk against the repressive law on the mass media, adopted last week by the presidentially-appointed legislature. (See Monitor, October 17). Russian ORT TV 's Minsk bureau chief Pavel Sheremet, who is due to stand criminal trial... MORE