According to preliminary data gathered by the Russia's Statistical Committee and the Customs Office, Russia's imports (in dollar terms) from other CIS countries during the first four months of 1997 were some 22 percent below their levels of January-April 1996. While Russia's exports to the... MORE

The Progress Aviation Company in Arsenev, near Vladivostock, has become part of the Moscow Aviation Production Organization (MAPO). Progress produces the Kamov Ka-50 and Ka-52 attack helicopters. The move marks another step in the effort to organize the defense industry along more vertical lines. Previously... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has ordered the government to pay off its debt to the armed forces within one month, Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Sysuyev told a Moscow news conference yesterday. He added that he was "sure" the money would be forthcoming. Concurrently, however, military families... MORE

As it did following a similar incident nearly a year ago, Moscow has again rebuffed a protest by Tokyo over a decision by Russian border forces to fire on Japanese boats fishing the waters near the disputed Kuril Islands. (See Monitor, June 27) The Russian... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin has decided to send Deputy Prime Minister Valery Serov and Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afanasevsky as Moscow's official representatives to NATO's July 8-9 summit in Madrid, Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky announced yesterday. Although Serov's and Afanasevsky's names were mentioned in a... MORE

As the pundits had predicted, no victor emerged in the June 29 elections either for a new governor of Nizhny Novgorod oblast or for a new mayor of the city of Samara. (RTR, June 30) Run-off elections will be held in two weeks' time. The... MORE

President Nursultan Nazarbaev said yesterday he was surprised that Russia was objecting to the research flights being conducted in Kazakstan by a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion. That day the plane flew over the former Soviet nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. A Kazak deputy foreign minister... MORE

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, back in Moscow after his visit to China, said he will appeal today to the Duma to interrupt its summer recess to vote on the government's 1997 austerity mini-budget and proposed cuts in welfare spending. (Itar-Tass, June 30) Communist faction leader... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has given his younger daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, a salaried post as adviser with responsibility for public relations. The appointment formalizes the unofficial role that Dyachenko, 37, has been playing as presidential image-maker since the spring of 1996, when she stepped in to... MORE

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov will attend all events marking the handover of Hong Kong to China, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday. Moscow will not, therefore, join a boycott by London and Washington of a swearing-in ceremony for Hong Kong's new unelected legislature. The... MORE