Procurator General Yury Skuratov, Russia's chief legal officer, announced yesterday that he has launched an investigation into a payment of $100,000 made to the former head of Russia's privatization agency, Alfred Kokh. (Itar-Tass, September 11) The payment had been made to Kokh by an obscure... MORE

Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov has announced plans to build a new capital, 20 kilometers south of Grozny. (RTR, September 11) According to Maskhadov, the idea of moving the capital originated with Chechnya's first president, Djohar Dudaev, who approved plans for the new city prior to... MORE

Relations between Moscow and Grozny are once again dangerously tense. Both sides are already threatening to repudiate the agreements signed earlier this week on the transit of Caspian oil through Chechen territory. (RTR, NTV, September 11) The situation took a turn for the worse when... MORE

The public execution set for September 10 in Grozny was unexpectedly postponed. Chechen officials insisted that the postponement was not a cancellation, but they failed to set a new date. The Russian media are interpreting the postponement as the effect of the negative reaction of... MORE

Russia expects to have to borrow only $3 billion from international lenders and foreign governments in 1998, Deputy Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the Russian press last week. This represents a decline from the $12 billion borrowed from foreign governments in 1992, in order to... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin yesterday appointed Nikolai Mikhailov to succeed Andrei Kokoshin as a Russian first deputy minister of defense. For the past year, Mikhailov had been serving as one of the deputy secretaries of the Defense Council. Like Kokoshin he is a civilian and a... MORE

Officials in Moscow continued yesterday to deny allegations that Russia -- or Russian officials acting independently -- are involved in the development of an Iranian long range nuclear missile. (See yesterday's Monitor) The Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman, Valery Nesterushkin, claimed that the "appropriate Russian agencies"... MORE

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and the Ministry of Economy introduced Ukraine's long-awaited exchange-rate corridor on September 1. (Unian, Russian agencies, September 1). Under this exchange-rate regime, the hryvnya is to fluctuate between 1.7 and 1.9 hryvnya to the dollar until the end of... MORE

Eduard Yeghorian and nine other parliamentary deputies have created a new parliamentary group, Homeland, splitting off from the Republic bloc which forms the majority in Armenia's parliament. The majority promptly retaliated by replacing Yeghorian from his post of chairman of the parliament's Legal Affairs Committee.... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has rejected rumors of an impending shake-up in the Russian government. He specifically denied that he intends to dismiss Boris Berezovsky, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council. (Itar-Tass, September 11) Rumors of Berezovsky's ouster were fueled last month when, in an... MORE