A surge in foreign investment experienced by Kazakstan in recent years seems to be accelerating this year. The Icelandic company Ivedon International has rescued the large and ailing Sokolovsk-Sarbaysk iron ore mining and enrichment complex, and is set to increase output to 24 million tons... MORE

Yukhim Zvyahilsky is back home in Donetsk after more than two years spent as a fugitive in Israel. As acting prime minister in 1993-94, Zvyahilsky was accused of large-scale misappropriation of state property in connection with fuel exports and currency transactions, and fled to Israel... MORE

On March 4 and 5 in Moscow, another round of negotiations to settle the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict ended without results. South Ossetia's chief delegate, the self-styled Prime Minister Aleksandr Shavlokhov, sought recognition of "special relations" between South Ossetia and the Russian Federation's republic of North... MORE

Continued public proclamations of its enduring opposition to NATO enlargement notwithstanding, Russia seems less sure-footed of late in its strategy toward the Western alliance. During a visit to London on February 27-March 1, Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed at one point that NATO postpone... MORE

At a Moscow meeting yesterday organized by the League for Assistance to Defense Enterprises, a coalition of military-complex plant directors and trade union leaders called for the dismissal of the government. Representatives of the two groups said that they had lost confidence in the present... MORE

Four Russian journalists, not two as reported earlier, were abducted in Djohar-gala on March 4. The victims have been identified as Radio Russia correspondents Nikolai Mamulashvili and Yuri Arkhipov, Radio Russia's satellite telephone engineer Lev Zeltser, and Itar-Tass correspondent Nikolai Zagnoiko. (Interfax, Itar-Tass, March 5)... MORE

Yeltsin's promise this morning to bring "competent and energetic" managers into the cabinet is widely seen as a signal that Yeltsin plans to return Russia's most radical economic reformer and efficient administrator, Anatoly Chubais, to the government. (BBC World Service, March 6) Chubais, 42, who... MORE

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Presidential Chief of Staff Anatoly Chubais held a series of meetings on March 4 with the heads of Moscow's leading financial institutions to discuss the relationship between the banks and the government. (Interfax, March 5) The bankers apparently sought and... MORE

Japan's Foreign Ministry would like Moscow to explain why First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Ilyushin abruptly canceled a scheduled visit to Japan last week only to show up as head of a Russian delegation in Switzerland yesterday. Ilyushin, whose dismissal has been much speculated upon... MORE

The United Arab Emirates is reportedly close to deciding on the purchase of a missile defense system in a deal that could be worth up to $1 billion. The U.S. firm Raytheon, maker of the Patriot, and Russia's Antei, maker of the S-300V system, are... MORE