As the price of oil soars above $50 a barrel, Saudi Arabia and Russia have begun to approach each other with a view to increase cooperation in stabilizing oil markets. Moscow's ambassador to Riyadh, Andrei Baklanov, has mentioned Saudi approaches to Moscow about cooperation in... MORE

Vladimir Putin has never been a man of second thoughts, but these days he might reflect on his year-old decision to put Mikhail Khodorkovsky behind bars without much joy. The negative repercussions of the arrest are definitely greater than he expected in an area that... MORE

The recent Human Rights Watch report on the abuse of conscripts within the Russian army has provoked outrage in Moscow, eliciting strong denials and attempts by the authorities to downplay the scale of the problem. The U.S.-based group asserted that first-year conscripts in the Russian... MORE

Some 2,000 people gathered on Pushkin Square in central Moscow on Saturday October 23 to protest the war in Chechnya and, more broadly, the administration of President Vladimir Putin. Members of various human rights and pro-democracy groups, including For Human Rights, the Anti-war Club, and... MORE

The North Caucasus republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia has been buffeted by instability this week. Over three successive days, a group of several hundred distraught relatives and friends of seven people who disappeared earlier this month and are believed to have been murdered held demonstrations in Cherkessk,... MORE

Two events -- the upcoming U.S. presidential election and Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent announcement of his controversial "reform measures" -- appear to have intensified discussions about the current state and possible evolution of Russian-American relations. One group of politicians and pundits in Moscow and... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin had a busy international schedule in mid-October, meeting in Moscow with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Brazilian Vice-President Jose Alenkar, followed by a full-scale official visit to China, and then staying for several days in Central Asia with a dense... MORE

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has announced a series of military personnel cuts that will affect the entire Russian armed forces, not merely the many layers of bureaucrats within the central directorates and main commands in Moscow. The nature of these cuts, which should be... MORE

The idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin should stay on beyond his second and last constitutionally mandated term was given fresh expression yesterday (October 19) by Pavel Borodin, state secretary of the still largely notional Russia-Belarus Union. Borodin, the former Kremlin property department chief who... MORE

More than one month has now passed since the tragedy in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, but what really happened there is still subject to debate. When the hostages crisis ended with hundreds dead, Russian authorities tried their best to assure the outside world... MORE