By Volodymyr Zviglyanich The rise to power in Russia of Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB who never gave up his party card, has raised more questions than it has provided answers among Russian and western analysts. There are endless discussions surrounding the... MORE

By Igor Rotar "Welcome to hell." These are the words that greet all visitors to Grozny, scrawled by Chechen fighters to intimidate the federal troops. The place that until recently was the Chechen capital does indeed conjure up visions of purgatory. During the previous military... MORE

By Svetlana Sidorenko-Stephenson The problem of Russia's street children has over the last few years become a matter of a serious national and international concern. Although no reliable data exist on the number of children living and/or working on the street in Russia as a... MORE

By Elena Dikun At a meeting with his trusted advisers at the end of February, Acting President Vladimir Putin spoke of his attitude to the oligarchs: "They should be kept at an equal distance from power, and should have equal opportunities." It was thus important... MORE

(Or who in Russia supports it, and why?)

By Nabi Abdullaev The federal forces in Chechnya are now facing a new stage in the military conflict. Trench warfare is coming to an end: Only a few villages in the remote mountainous regions are not yet under formal Russian control. It is just a... MORE

By Sergei Oznobishchev Once again--for the umpteenth time--the changes taking place in Russia are a cause for concern for the West, although strictly speaking the endless predictions that events in Russia would follow the worst case scenario have not been borne out. One recalls all... MORE

By Volodymyr Zviglyanich The dramatic events in Russia at the turn of the new century, with the resignation of Boris Yeltsin and the transfer of full power to Vladimir Putin, undoubtedly eclipse everything else going on in the former Soviet republics, Ukraine included. At the... MORE

By Zaal Anjaparidze RUSSIA WANTS GEORGIA BACK South Caucasus and Georgia, in particular, have of late become a headache for Moscow. In January Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told a session of the European Parliament Assembly in Strasbourg that Russia would never reconcile itself to... MORE

By Dmitry Trofimov One result of the establishment of new independent states in Central Asia was the revival of Kazakh-Uzbek rivalry for supremacy in the region--in a decidedly more bitter form than was seen in Soviet times. In the USSR, practically the only manifestation of... MORE