Turkmen president Saparmurad Niazov has been taken off intensive care in the clinic near Munich where he underwent complicated heart surgery on September 1. Niazov will need at least two more weeks of recuperation in the clinic following the "urgent" operation, the German chief surgeon... MORE

Russian and Chechen government officials are meeting in Moscow today in another attempt to agree to the terms by which "early" Caspian oil bound for western markets will be transported from Baku across Chechen territory to Russia's Black Sea port at Novorossiisk. Chechnya will be... MORE

Chechnya marked the sixth anniversary of its declaration of independence from Russia with a military parade through the center of its capital, Djohar-gala. The display, which was watched by an estimated 150,000 people, included captured Russian armor. President Aslan Maskhadov laid the foundation stone for... MORE

Retired Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Lebed has charged that the Russian military is unable to account for as many as 100 of the 250 "suitcase" nuclear bombs once in the Soviet inventory. Russian and U.S. authorities were quick to downplay Lebed's claim. Gen. Yevgeny Maslin, chief... MORE

A large gap in First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov's efforts to subject Russia's monopolies to closer social control was filled at the end of August with the appointment of Natalia Fonaryova as head of the State Antimonopoly Committee (SAC). (Russian agencies, August 28; Rossiiskaya... MORE

The Council of Border Troops' Commanders of CIS Member Countries met on September 5 in Kyrgyzstan under the chairmanship of Russia Gen. Andrei Nikolaev. The session, which marked five years since the Council's establishment, was supposed to consider a set of draft agreements and programs... MORE

The Presidents of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, their counterparts from Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin conferred in Vilnius on September 5-6 on the subject of "Peaceful Coexistence and Good Neighborly Relations as Guarantees of Security and Stability." Lennart... MORE

On a trouble-shooting visit to the city of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian prime minister Valery Pustovoytenko told a meeting of the regional administration's senior staff that "a criminal economic elite has formed and entrenched itself in Dnipropetrovsk region, and is striving for power... That elite seeks, not... MORE

The Ukrainian parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has voted to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Leonid Kuchma and forwarded its resolution for floor action. The committee charged that the president was in violation of the constitution by refusing to sign the law on local state administrations,... MORE

. The city of Moscow today began three days of festivities celebrating the 850th anniversary of the city's founding. President Boris Yeltsin marked the occasion this morning with a special broadcast and Mayor Yury Luzhkov unveiled a huge and controversial statue of Peter the Great... MORE