. Oleg Kalugin, a retired KGB counter-intelligence chief who turned on the agency publicly in the 1990's, is seeking to become a permanent resident of the U.S. The Washington Post reported yesterday that it had learned from several retired CIA operatives of Kalugin's efforts to... MORE

The governor of Hokkaido, together with the administrative heads of Russia's Primorye, Khabarovsk, and Sakhalin regions, signed an economic cooperation agreement on September 2 following talks in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The accord aims to boost foreign trade and investment between the regions, and to... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has condemned as "inadmissible," "mediaeval," and the "law of the lynch mob" the public execution of a young man and woman in the Chechen capital. The two, who had been found guilty of murder by one of Chechnya's new Shariat courts, were... MORE

Fresh doubts were cast yesterday over the status and outcome of Russia's attempts to negotiate an agreement with Chechnya over the transport of Caspian oil to western markets. What was clear was that Russia's threats to bypass Chechnya had an impact: Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov,... MORE

At a September 4 ceremony in Moscow North Ossetian president Akhsarbek Galazov and his Ingushetian counterpart, Ruslan Aushev, signed an agreement on the regulation of relations and cooperation between their two republics. (RTR, September 4) The Kremlin's interest in the document was confirmed by the... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin was reported on September 3 to have emphatically denied media reports that Federal Security Service (FSB) director Nikolai Kovalev will soon be relieved of his duties. The reports had suggested that First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais was behind the attempt... MORE

The pending sale of twelve Su-30 fighters and eight Mi-17 helicopters to Indonesia looks like another coup for Russian arms exporters, but the Indonesians are apparently driving a hard bargain. Russian deputy prime minister Yakov Urinson and Indonesia's national development planning minister, Ginangar Kartasasmita, reportedly... MORE

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday charged that Turkish plans to inspect Russian merchant ships for air defense missiles bound for Cyprus would violate the 1936 Montreux Convention. Gennady Tarasov said that the convention provided for the free passage of merchant vessels through the straits... MORE

According to data on industrial production during the first seven months of 1997, released recently by the CIS Interstate Statistical Committee, Kyrgyzstan reported a whopping 37.8 percent increase in industrial output compared to the same period in 1996. Belarus reported a controversial 14.6 percent increase... MORE

Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka's official economic numbers may look impressive, but the IMF does not seem to find them persuasive. Moreover, even according to the official numbers, inflation in Belarus is running well above the levels of neighboring countries. While it is difficult to discern... MORE