Over five thousand people watched yesterday as two men were executed by firing squad in central Grozny. The pair had been found guilty of killing two women and an 11-year-old girl and were sentenced by one of Chechnya's new Islamic courts. The executions, which were... MORE

President Yeltsin's wife Naina was present yesterday at the official opening of Moscow's first hospice. (RTR, September 18) There are now 22 hospices caring for the dying in Russia. The first was opened in what was Leningrad in the late 1980s, largely through the efforts... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin used a meeting yesterday with faculty at a university in the Russian city of Orel to make several noteworthy foreign policy statements. They dealt in particular with European security issues and bilateral relations with Japan. On the first count, Yeltsin said that... MORE

The newly elected mayor of the Volga city of Samara, Georgy Limansky, wants to be seen as a politician who keeps his campaign promises. Limansky was elected in July to replace former mayor Oleg Sysuev, who moved to Moscow in the spring to take the... MORE

The KGB of Belarus announced yesterday that Russian ORT TV Minsk bureau chief Pavel Sheremet, cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky, and driver Yaroslav Ovchinnikov will go on trial next week on criminal charges for violating the border. Their legal term of pre-trial detention expires on September 25,... MORE

The Ukrainian-British-Polish paratroop exercise Cossack Steppe-97, which began on September 13 at Shiroky Lan training range in Mikolayiv region, officially closed yesterday. Defense Ministers Oleksandr Kuzmuk, George Robertson, and Stanislaw Dobrzansky watched the culminating phase in which a tripartite paratroop battalion performed a landing operation,... MORE

Three deputies from the Self-Determination Union, an opposition party, beat up a fourth deputy in the Armenian parliament yesterday. The victim, Aramazd Zakarian, had long been one of the SDU's leaders, but had recently left the party in order to accept the post of deputy... MORE

Yesterday's statement by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, warning that the recently signed Russian-Armenian military alliance treaty does not guarantee Armenian territorial gains at the expense of Azerbaijan (see Monitor, September 18), contained an additional proposal that was reported only afterward. That second portion of... MORE

Tajikistan's National Reconciliation Commission, comprised of government and Opposition leaders and mandated to implement the June peace agreements, went to work this week. It focused on the formation of a coalition government and the exchange of prisoners and detainees. The June 27 Moscow agreement entitles... MORE

Kazakh foreign minister Kasymzhomart Tokaev announced yesterday in a Russian press interview that Almaty will legally challenge Russia's recently announced oil and gas prospection tender in the Caspian Sea. The Russian tender encompasses zones that are partly situated in Kazakhstan's sector as defined by the... MORE