A key piece of legislation--part of the Russian government's effort to debureaucratize the economy--appears in danger, thanks to lobbying efforts state bureaucrats are aiming at State Duma deputies. As originally conceived by German Gref's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the bill would have reduced... MORE

The cycle of violence in Chechnya appears to be escalating, with Russian forces targeting civilians for increasingly punitive "mopping-up" or "cleansing" operations in response to rebel attacks. Mopping-up operations in the town of Argun, the village of Aldy and other adjacent areas entered a third... MORE

On July 2 Estonia hosted a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the ten countries, situated between the Baltic Sea and the Balkans, that hope to join NATO. This informal club of countries, founded at a similar meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania in May of... MORE

Controversial plans to import thousands of tons of nuclear waste into Russia took yet another big step forward last week when Russia's Federation Council passed on to President Vladimir Putin a package of bills that could make the plan a reality. The June 29 decision... MORE

On July 26, President Vladimir Putin created a new commission to make relations between the federal center and the regions more equal and transparent (Russian agencies, June 29). The twenty-two-member body is to be headed by Dmitry Kozak, a deputy head of the Kremlin administration... MORE

June 28 was the deadline for registering candidates for the governor's race in Irkutsk Oblast, and July 1 marked the official start of campaigning. The election will be held on July 29 (Russian agencies, June 28-29). Seven candidates have been registered, but observers believe the... MORE

On June 29, Russian troops left the Vaziani base and Georgian troops took it over. On the same day in Tbilisi, senior officials of the two countries' defense ministries signed the documents on the transfer of the base from Russian to Georgian military jurisdiction. Russia... MORE

Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has put out a warrant for the arrest of Badri Patarkatsishvili, a long-time associate of Boris Berezovsky and chairman of TV-6's board of directors. Berezovsky controls a 75-percent share of the channel. Patarkatsishvili is accused of assisting in an alleged attempt... MORE

The arrest warrant for TV-6 board chairman Badri Patarkatsishvili for his alleged role in helping former Aeroflot official Nikolai Glushkov try to escape incarceration was issued after TV-6's minority shareholder, Lukoil-Garant, filed suit to invalidate two TV-6 shareholder meetings. Those meetings, which were held in... MORE

Lithuania is traversing a difficult crisis of its government and, to a certain extent, of its political party system. The coalition government, formed by the right-of-center Liberal Union (LU) and the left-of-center New Union/Social Liberals (NU/SL), collapsed on June 18-20 after only seven months in... MORE