Prosecutors in Qatar have asked that two Russian special services agents accused of assassinating former Chechen separatist President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in February be sentenced to death. Dmitri Afanasyev, an attorney representing the accused Russians, said the prosecution had asked for the death penalty in the... MORE

The past week has seen surprising developments on several fronts in Russia's war on corruption. Taken together, they remind us of the magnitude of the corruption that has such deep roots. But these events also demonstrate that the Russian state is sporadic and selective in... MORE

A statue of Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader and KGB head, has been erected in front of the building housing the Karelia Federal Security Service (FSB) directorate in Petrozavodsk, Karelia's capital city. The 3.5-meter statue stands in a square on a street named after Andropov,... MORE

As world oil prices climb to new heights, officials and experts in Moscow revise upwards their production plans and propose quick solutions for clearing the bottlenecks in oil export capacity. In this stream of optimistic commentary, one key channel for delivering the Caspian oil to... MORE

On June 4 in Prague, Russian left-wing activists from the three Baltic states led the founding conference of the "Russian Party of the European Union." Main initiators of the party are: Tatyana Zhdanoka from Latvia, Georgii Bystrov from Estonia, and Sergey Dmitriev from Lithuania. The... MORE

This week Russian President Vladimir Putin has a busy diplomatic schedule. After attending the D-Day ceremonies on June 6, the first Russian president so honored, Putin flew to Mexico, in the first-ever visit to that country by a Russian head of state. He will then... MORE

Several events this week, seemingly unrelated, neatly illustrate the gradual closing of horizons in Russian democracy. The most dramatic and visible of the three was the June 2 firing of Leonid Parfenov, the charismatic host of NTV's weekly "Namedni" talk show. Technically, he was removed... MORE

In his recent state of the nation address, Russia's President Vladimir Putin was excruciatingly specific about his administration's economic policies. He was much less specific, however, in addressing the issue of the Kremlin's foreign policy. True, Putin did repeat a worn-out mantra about the strategic... MORE

The mood among western observers of the Yukos oil company has shifted decisively over the past week. They now see the company as a lost cause. The embattled Russian oil major has been slowly sinking since the arrest of its president Mikhail Khodorkovsky last October.... MORE

Presidents Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan, Imomali Rahmonov of Tajikistan, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan met on May 28 in Astana for the annual summit of the Central Asia Cooperation Organization (CACO). At Karimov’s initiative, summit leaders invited Russia to join CACO... MORE