Russia has decided not to sell missiles to Syria because it could alter the balance of power in the Middle East, Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told an Israeli radio reporter in Paris on May 26. According to the reporter, Russia is, however, interested both in... MORE

Tatyana Samolis, press spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, has refused to comment on a German magazine report alleging that Russian intelligence has infiltrated NATO's coded internal communications network. The magazine had claimed that six U.S. security officers formerly working in West Berlin had sold... MORE

Both parliament and the prime minister in Ukraine's Autonomous Republic of Crimea are appealing to Kiev to intervene in their ongoing dispute. The presidium of Crimea's Supreme Soviet has called on Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma to support its decision to dismiss Prime Minister Arkady Demydenko,... MORE

Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov says the treaty he signed on May 21 with Tatarstan's president, Mintimer Shaimiev, marks the first stage of Chechnya's opening to the outside world. According to Maskhadov, the economic side of the agreement entered into force immediately, with Kazan dispatching, free... MORE

In a Kremlin ceremony that followed down-to-the-wire negotiations, Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Aleksandr Lukashenko on May 23 signed the Charter of the Russia-Belarus Union. Each president successfully pressed his own agenda. Lukashenko managed to minimize his -- and by implication his country's -- political subordination... MORE

Russian's Fuel and Energy Ministry and Chechnya's Yuzhnaya oil company (YUNKO) last week signed a general cooperation agreement. (Itar-Tass, May 23) Detailed agreements on the excavation, transport, and refining of oil will also be signed soon, YUNKO head Khozh-Akhmed Yarikhanov said. The Chechen government is... MORE

Yakub Usmanov, formerly one of the most active participants in the Chechen resistance movement, was killed on the night of May 23-24. Usmanov, who was running as a candidate from the National Independence Party in the elections for mayor of Djohar-gala, was found burned to... MORE

The Russian Duma last week condemned as "unsatisfactory" the government's management of the budget in the first quarter of this year (a watered-down version of the original wording which would have condemned the government's management of the economy as a whole), but postponed a vote... MORE

The day after firing their predecessors, President Boris Yeltsin on May 23 invited newly-named defense minister Igor Sergeev and acting General Staff chief Col. Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin to the Kremlin to discuss military reform. The presidential press service's account of this meeting aptly illustrates the... MORE

Representatives of some of the nine countries, signatories to the CIS collective security treaty, convened in Moscow today following the Taliban's latest victories in northern Afghanistan over forces supported by Russia and Iran. Moscow seeks to draw the Central Asian countries into some joint defensive... MORE