Russian president Boris Yeltsin says Russia will seek to discontinue its borrowing from the International Monetary Fund as of 1999. Expressing satisfaction at Russia's admission to the Paris Club of creditor nations (see below), Yeltsin also said he "firmly backs the young people" in the... MORE

The Russian Duma yesterday postponed for another month the election of a human rights commissioner since none of seven potential candidates managed to collect the necessary minimum of 300 votes. The highest number of votes, 265, went yesterday to the Communist candidate, Oleg Mironov. He... MORE

Sergei Blagovolin, director-general of Russian Public Television (ORT), is resigning to become president of an investment bank. Blagovolin has been in the post since March 1995. (Ekho Moskvy, September 16) Blagovolin is said to have clashed repeatedly with ORT's main financial backer, Boris Berezovsky. Director... MORE

The director of Moscow's Preobrazhensky market was found shot dead at the entrance to his house early on the morning of September 16. He had been in the post for only two months. A gangland killing is suspected. His predecessor had also been assassinated (Ekho... MORE

The governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev, is suing the city's former mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, for libel. In an interview with the tabloid Sovershenno Sekretno in February, Sobchak accused Yakovlev of having ties to organized crime. (Itar-Tass, September 17) Last year, Yakovlev defeated Sobchak in... MORE

In an article published by a Russian border forces journal, Security Council secretary Ivan Rybkin states that the most serious threats to Russia's security over the near and middle term will come not from external military forces, but from Russia's internal economic, social, ecological, and... MORE

A defense analyst suggests in a recent newspaper article that the accomplishments of Russia's arms exporters may not be quite so impressive as some believe. The analyst argues that, although the volume of Russian arms exports is indeed rising, the low prices at which they... MORE

First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais was in Paris yesterday to sign an agreement on Russia's admission to the Paris Club, the 18-member group of creditor nations. Chubais told a press conference that membership will resolve outstanding issues of Russia's inherited debt owed both by... MORE

Russian deputy prime minister Ramazan Abdulatipov, who has responsibility for nationalities policy, says there is no chance that Russia will persuade Chechnya to sign a treaty that treats the breakaway republic as if it were a subject of the Russian Federation. "After all that has... MORE

The Russian government yesterday approved the construction of a new oil pipeline bypassing Chechnya. The 284-km pipeline will go through Dagestan and Stavropol krai, skirting Chechnya's administrative border on its way from the Caspian to Russia's Black Sea port at Novorossiisk. The government did not,... MORE