Mixed messages have been coming from some of those charged with investigating the Beslan school seizure concerning possible foreign involvement in the tragedy. Federation Council Vice-speaker Aleksandr Torshin, who heads the parliamentary commission investigating the circumstances surrounding the Beslan terrorist act, told Interfax on November... MORE

On November 12, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov triumphantly announced that all units of the 76th Airborne Division located in Chechnya will be withdrawn from the Republic by January 2005, the Yufo.ru website reported. However, on November 26, RIA Novosti quoted Nikolai Rogozhkin, commander of... MORE

--REBEL WEBSITE REAPPEARS IN LITHUANIA Kavkaz Center, the Chechen separatist website, resumed operations in Lithuania on November 29. Interfax quoted a statement from the website's administration as saying that operations resumed as soon as the Second District Court in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, ruled that all... MORE

Sergei Bagapsh, the opposition's presidential candidate in the disputed presidential elections in Georgia's breakaway region, Abkhazia, is inching toward securing the presidency. On November 26, the Abkhazian parliament officially decreed the October 3 presidential elections valid, "despite certain electoral violations" and declared Bagapsh president-elect. The... MORE

Abkhazia's political polarization deepened suddenly on November 17, amid continuing attempts by presidential election loser Raul Khajimba and his Moscow backers to prevent the election's winner, Sergei Bagapsh, from taking office. Nodar Khashba, an Abkhaz-born Russian officer recently installed by Moscow as prime minister in... MORE

The month-long confrontation over the disputed presidential elections in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia has claimed its first victim. Tamara Shakryl, 78, was a senior associate at the Institute for the Study of the Humanities, Abkhazian Academy of Sciences, and backed presidential candidate Raul Khajimba.... MORE

Russia's Gazprom is counting on three factors to rush Georgia advice, into a political decision to sell the country's gas transportation system to the Russian monopoly. Those factors are: the approaching winter, the urgent need for capital injections into that system, and fortuitously convergent support... MORE

On November 10, Georgia's Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania and Conflict Resolution Minister Giorgi Khaindrava reported to the cabinet of ministers' session that demilitarization of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict zone is progressing in a satisfactory manner. Nightly incidents, in which Ossetian armed groups fire from hilltops... MORE

The Georgian parliament and public are deeply divided about a government-proposed tax amnesty. The most controversial part of the bill, which focuses on "undeclared taxation duties and property legalization," is the list of affected taxpayers. During the October 27 cabinet meeting, President Mikheil Saakashvili asked... MORE

On November 5, Russia and the OSCE sponsored a meeting in Sochi between Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania and South Ossetian separatist leader Eduard Kokoiti. This was the first meeting between a top Georgian official and Kokoiti since his election as South Ossetian President in... MORE