Recently appointed Russian defense minister Gen. Igor Sergeev is beginning Russia's military reform process with the part of the armed forces he knows best -- the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF). Yesterday the former SRF commander outlined some of the first steps he plans to take,... MORE

President Mintimer Shaimiev says Tatarstan is prepared to invest in Chechnya's post-war reconstruction if its contributions can be written off as federal taxes. (Itar-Tass, June 9) Tatarstan is one of only a handful of Russian provinces that pay more into the federal budget than they... MORE

Negotiations between Russian first deputy premier Boris Nemtsov and the president of the Southern Oil Company (YUNKO), Khodzh-Akhmed Yarikhanov, lasted almost all of last week but failed to produce agreement on the transportation of early Azerbaijani oil through Chechen territory. After the unsuccessful talks, Yarikhanov... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin yesterday warmly praised the performance of his market-oriented cabinet, in place since mid-March. Yeltsin said the new team of Anatoly Chubais, Boris Nemtsov, and Oleg Sysuyev had given a "new impulse " to the government's work. His remarks were a thinly... MORE

Chisinau has reduced the daily airtime available to Russia's Ostankino Television in Moldova to 4 hours, down from 6 earlier this year and 12 prior to that. Moldova has recently been paying the full costs of transmission and will continue doing so, as Ostankino is... MORE

The first shipments of oil to Iran from Kazakstan across the Caspian Sea took place on June 9, part of a deal arranged by President Nursultan Nazarbaev in May, 1996. Kazak Oil says it intends to export 1 million tons of crude oil to Iran... MORE

Government sources in Tokyo indicated on June 7 that Japan is considering the purchase of several Russian fighter jets -- either the Su-27 or the MiG-29 -- possibly by the end of this year. The purchase was said to be aimed at enhancing Japanese-Russian defense... MORE

A remote-controlbomb on June 6 severely damaged part of a Soviet-era monumentin Riga. Two Russian Foreign Ministry statements demanded identificationand punishment of the perpetrators; cited bilateral agreementsrequiring Latvia to care for Soviet military memorials in thecountry; and warned that Latvia's handling of the incident willbe... MORE

The purchase lastweek by China's National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) of 60 percentof the equity in Kazakstan's Aktyubinskmunaigaz oil firmsignaled more than China's desire to stake its claim in the greatCentral Asian oil game. It underscored the prospect that significantamounts of oil from the Caspian basin... MORE

Writingin the current issue of the Kyiv journal Politychna dumka,National Security and Defense Council head Volodymyr Horbulinobserves that Ukraine's foreign policy doctrine has "de factorenounced the country's non-bloc status" and reserves theright to seek membership in NATO. According to Horbulin, neitherinternational obligations nor membership of... MORE