Tatarstan will be the first Russian region to sign a trade and economic cooperation treaty with breakaway Chechnya, according to sources close to Tatarstan's president, Mintimer Shaimiev. "We aren't disturbed by the uncertainty of Chechnya's status," said a member of the presidential staff. "We have... MORE

Boris Yeltsin broke little new ground on foreign or security policy issues during his State of the Union message yesterday to parliament. The Russian president reiterated Moscow's opposition to NATO enlargement, describing it as a "direct threat" to Russia's security and an effort to push... MORE

Azerbaijani president Haidar Aliev's foreign policy adviser, Vafa Guluzade, yesterday rejected Armenia's proposal for direct Baku-Karabakh negotiations to settle the conflict. Baku can only accept an "intra-Azerbaijani dialogue" after Karabakh officially renounces its goal of independence and accepts autonomy within Azerbaijan, Guluzade stated, referring to... MORE

Moscow police on March 5 arrested two Tajik State Security officers in the act of carrying a hefty eight kilograms of raw opium off the express train on arrival from Dushanbe. The Tajik officers are enrolled in courses at the Federal Security Service (FSB) Academy... MORE

Addressing a meeting of the government yesterday, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said he would carry out a thorough reorganization of the government's "structure and membership." (Itar-Tass, March 7) Chernomyrdin was speaking after Boris Yeltsin's address to parliament, in which the Russian president said he... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin has ordered his government to open negotiations with Russia's main trade union organization, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FITU), to persuade it to call off the nationwide strike set for March 27. (Rossiiskie vesti, March 6) FITU has called the strike... MORE

A Russian mother bled to death when the power company cut off electricity to the hospital in which she was undergoing an operation after giving birth. The hospital, in a small town in Russia's Far East, had not paid its electricity bill, and the woman... MORE

In an interview broadcast yesterday, Ukrainian foreign minister Hennady Udovenko urged that the agreement under negotiation between NATO and Russia not lead to the creation of spheres of influence as a price for NATO's enlargement. Udovenko reaffirmed that Kiev has no objection to enlargement and... MORE

The Duma has banished reporters from Russian Public Television (ORT, Russia's most-watched television channel) from its sessions for a month. Parliamentarians said ORT's reporting was persistently biased. The last straw was ORT's coverage of a Duma debate on pornography, which showed parliamentarians making ribald and... MORE

The Chechen authorities have ordered all journalists to leave the republic until the current negotiations between Russian and Chechen delegations are completed. First Deputy Premier Movladi Udugov said the move was intended to protect the journalists and to make it possible for the negotiations to... MORE