Preparations for a meeting between Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya are underway and the meeting is expected to take place soon after Yeltsin's anticipated return to Moscow on August 4. Yeltsin plans to offer Chechnya an agreement along the lines... MORE

An official of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed yesterday that, over the past three years, the FSB has managed to stop 46 Russian citizens from making contact with foreign intelligence services or from continuing their work for them. In an interview marking the 75th... MORE

In a statement televised yesterday, Belarusan president Alyaksandr Lukashenka rejected as "unfounded" and "emotional" his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin's accusations, voiced the preceding day, regarding the detention of the three-man Belarusan crew of Russia's Public Television (ORT). Declaring himself willing to provide the explanations demanded... MORE

In an interview published by a leading Ukrainian weekly, Henadz Karpenka, chairman of Belarus's National Economic Council, described official rhetoric about rapid economic growth in Belarus "a regular lie". (Zerkalo nedeli, July 12) Karpenka's assessment contrasts with claims of Belarus's "economic miracle" made last week... MORE

Ukraine will not have received all its share of the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet by today -- its Navy holiday and the deadline agreed upon earlier by Ukrainian and Russian negotiators. A Ukrainian Navy spokesman said earlier in the week that Ukraine had accepted... MORE

A former Russian diplomat, arrested on April 11, 1996, and charged with spying for Britain, has been ordered by a Moscow court to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment and will face prosecution once he is deemed recovered. The decision was a defeat for Platon Obukhov, whose... MORE

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) yesterday refused comment on reports that Tokyo police are searching for a Russian national suspected of having spied for Moscow since the 1960's. (See yesterday's Monitor) An SVR spokeswoman did say that Japan has not contacted Russia officially about the... MORE

On the evening of July 29, a crowd of about a thousand people, many of them armed, burst into a camp for Ingush repatriates in the village of Tarskoe, in North Ossetia's Prigorodny district. Eyewitnesses claim that officers from the North Ossetian Interior Ministry (MVD)... MORE

Talking to journalists at his Volga vacation residence yesterday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin said he intends to invite Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov to Moscow for talks. The plan Yeltsin intends to present to Maskhadov boils down to a power-sharing agreement between Russian and Chechen government... MORE

For the second time in less than a week, President Boris Yeltsin on July 29 sought to reassure Russian servicemen who might be apprehensive over upcoming military personnel cuts and defense restructuring. In a message circulated by the presidential press service, Yeltsin once again hammered... MORE