The sale of 40 percent of shares in the Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), which was set for July 18, has been postponed by the Tyumen arbitration court in response to an appeal by an obscure Liechtenstein-based firm. Cadet Establishment reportedly holds 9 percent of the... MORE

While the oil war heats up, a truce has been declared in the aluminum war, on one front at least. On July 11 the board of directors of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum factory elected a new director after the controversial former director, Yury Kolpakov, stepped down.... MORE

On July 9 the government newspaper Rossiiskaya gazeta accused Oneksimbank subsidiary MFK of making off with a $400 million loan intended for the military aircraft manufacturer MiG-MAPO. (See Monitor, July 9) Journalists from NTV's Itogi looked into the alleged fraud, but were unable to find... MORE

Reaffirming Russia's opposition to the inclusion of the Baltic states in NATO, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov yesterday called for devising "some other type" of security guarantees for the three states. Primakov offered unilateral Russian guarantees or, alternatively and without naming NATO, joint guarantees to be... MORE

President Leonid Kuchma has forwarded to the parliament for approval the candidacy of Valery Pustovoytenko for the post of prime minister. Born in 1947, Pustovoytenko was mayor of the city of Dnipropetrovsk in 1991-93, headed Kuchma's campaign staff in the 1994 presidential election, and later... MORE

In the presence of U.S. defense secretary William Cohen, the Cooperative Neighbor-97 joint exercise in Ukraine came to an end on July 11. Some 1,200 soldiers from the U.S., Greece, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Macedonia participated in the 11-day exercise.... MORE

The ninth congress of the ruling Armenian Pan-National Union over the weekend elected Vano Siradeghian as party leader, in place of Husik Ter-Lazarian, who had earlier announced his intention to step down. Siradeghian was the choice of President Levon Ter-Petrosian, who had squashed the candidacy... MORE

In his weekly radio address broadcast this morning, Russian president Boris Yeltsin told workers hit by delays in wage payments that they should blame their bosses, not the government, for their plight. He said the state was responsible for only 20 percent of wage arrears... MORE

A Chechen delegation, which had come to Moscow to negotiate a banking agreement and the terms under which Caspian oil will transit Chechen territory, broke off talks yesterday and announced that it was returning to Djohar-gala. The reason for the breakdown of the talks is... MORE

In order to "protect the purity of Islamic morals," Chechen first deputy premier Movladi Udugov has ordered that all Russian TV broadcasts, except newscasts, are to be replaced by domestic programming. Local programs are also coming under scrutiny. The Islamic Order, a political movement that... MORE