The proposed reform of the Russian "power" ministries may include another restructuring of Russia's major security services -- above all of the Federal Security Service (FSB), which is the main successor to the Soviet KGB. Russian media report that Boris Yeltsin signed a decree at... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin yesterday signed a decree promising that all wage arrears to servicemen will be paid by September 1, and all those to other federal and local state employees (doctors, nurses, teachers and so on) by January 1, 1998. The timetable will be very... MORE

The Russian government's temporary emergency tax discipline commission met on July 9 to discuss ways to implement Boris Yeltsin's promise to pay off all 11 trillion rubles of wage arrears to federal and local state employees by the end of the year. (RTR, July 8)... MORE

Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov yesterday blamed continuing tensions in and around his republic on "foreign security services" whose aim, he said, is to prove to the world that the Chechens are incapable of self-government. Maskhadov was speaking after nine Russian policemen were killed in Dagestan's... MORE

In a move of historical significance for Europe, NATO leaders meeting yesterday in Spain invited Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to join the Western alliance. The event marked yet another milestone in the political restructuring of the post-Cold War world, and also, as Polish... MORE

The Romanian Senate yesterday ratified the treaty of good-neighborly relations with Ukraine by a vote of 65 to 50, with three abstentions. Some Senators of the pro-Western, ruling Democratic Convention joined the leftist opposition in voting against the treaty. Critics object mainly to the recognition... MORE

Some of the ex-USSR's largest mining and processing enterprises in the nonferrous metallurgical sector, located in the East Kazakhstan region, will soon be taken over by Western companies. Visiting that region yesterday, President Nursultan Nazarbaev announced that the Leninogorsk polymetallic and the Ust-Kamenogorsk and Zyrian... MORE

Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze yesterday announced that he has accepted Lt. Gen. Shota Kviraia's resignation as minister of state security. Kviraia "placed Georgia's interests above his own" by resigning despite the absence of conclusive evidence of his involvement in the unlawful actions by ministry staff,... MORE

While Russian president Boris Yeltsin and his Azeri counterpart, Haidar Aliev, were reported to have agreed "in principle" on July 3 to sign an accord on the future use of the Soviet long-range phased-array radar system at Gabala in Azerbaijan, Aliev and Russian defense minister... MORE

One of the more significant results of last week's visit to Moscow by Azerbaijani president Haidar Aliev (see Monitor, July 7) was Baku's consent to sign a trilateral agreement with Russia and Chechnya on the transit of Caspian oil through Chechnya. By stressing that this... MORE