In a letter addressed to the ministers of defense, state security, and internal affairs, as well as to the heads of district administrations, Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov has painted a dramatic picture of the anarchy prevailing in regions that are nominally under government control. According... MORE

The Belarusan parliament's upper chamber yesterday voted unanimously to ratify the Russia-Belarus Union treaty and charter, but President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's address on the occasion went far beyond the terms of that union by describing it as a significant step toward the restoration of the USSR.... MORE

An officer on the staff of the 58th Army, Vladimir Gutnov, hanged himself on June 9. Some of his colleagues attributed the act to the fact that he had not been paid his salary for more than two months. Gutnov, who was married and had... MORE

Russian first deputy defense minister Andrei Kokoshin, the lone civilian in the upper echelons of Russia's military hierarchy, has just returned to Moscow from any inspection visit to the Leningrad Military District. In remarks made yesterday to the press, Kokoshin suggested that the primary reason... MORE

Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov created a sensation yesterday when he ordered an unidentified field commander to release the Russian TV crew which has been held hostage in Chechnya since March. Maskhadov's surprise order indicated that he knows the identity of the kidnappers. Unconfirmed reports say... MORE

Ildus Ilishev, formerly an adviser to the President of Bashkortostan, told an audience at Washington's Kennan Institute on June 9 that the power-sharing treaty which Bashkortostan signed with the Russian Federation in August 1994 gave the republic the autonomy it needed to make a success... MORE

It was a confident Sergei Dubinin, chairman of the Russian Central Bank (RCB), who addressed the sixth banking congress in St. Petersburg on June 6. Over the past two years the RCB has run a tight monetary policy which has brought inflation down to 12... MORE

In the wake of declarations from Boris Yeltsin, Boris Nemtsov, and Ivan Rybkin, Chubais has also issued a statement detailing his family's income and wealth. In 1996 he earned a hefty 1.71 billion rubles ($296,000). Of this total, 39.65 million rubles was accounted for by... MORE

First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais defended the government's record in a speech to the Federation Council on June 10. He said that 11 trillion rubles of the 34 trillion rubles in additional revenue which the government promised when presenting its sequestration proposals last month... MORE

Yevgeny Sevastyanov, aide to the Russian president, said yesterday that President Yeltsin will decide whether or not to sack the governor of Primorsky krai, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, after he receives a report from First Deputy Premier Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov is expected in the krai today, on... MORE