Yukos has warned that it could be forced to halt operations and exports and face bankruptcy within a month. The embattled oil company said in a statement that the court order freezing its bank accounts and assets means it will not have the $1.7 billion... MORE

Recent statements suggest that Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is optimistic about reaching a settlement with Russia over the four islands that Stalin seized from Japan at the end of 1945 (Asahi Shimbun, July 20). Japan has refused to sign a peace treaty with Russia... MORE

Yukos appears poised on the brink of extinction following the Justice Ministry's July 20 announcement that it will put the oil company's main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, up for sale to cover the $3.4 billion that the Tax Ministry is demanding from the oil company for... MORE

President Putin's July 19 appointment of Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky as Chief of the General Staff, after sacking General Anatoly Kvashnin the previous day, has been met with widespread support in Moscow. Not only do many colleagues and military analysts alike consider Baluyevsky as a safe... MORE

On July 19, President Vladimir Putin fired Anatoly Kvashnin, Chief of the General Staff, as part of sweeping changes to the top brass in the Russian military. The announcement followed growing speculation in the Russian media and military press about Kvashnin's future. The conjecture was... MORE

On July 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his second plenary address to the Russian diplomatic corps. Putin declared that Russia should be at the vanguard of the countries "shaping the new world order." In this respect, Russia's ambassadors were told to do more to... MORE

While there are apparently no leads thus far in the Russian authorities' investigation of the July 9 murder of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian-language version of Forbes magazine, various Western media have made much of the comments by Valery Straletsky, head of Detektiv Press,... MORE

The presidential decree restructuring the Federal Security Service (FSB), which was signed by President Vladimir Putin on July 11 and made public by the Kremlin on July 14, has not amounted to the worst-case scenario that some human rights activists had feared, namely the restoration... MORE

Competing oil pipeline projects in the Russian Far East were the topic of a lively symposium among specialists from Russia, China, Korea, Japan, and the United States at the Slavic Research Center in Sapporo, Japan, on July 14-16. Last year the Russian government surprised observers... MORE

The six-power negotiations over North Korean nuclearization have essentially two purposes. One obvious goal is to resolve peacefully and equitably the crisis generated by Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. The second, and less obvious, goal is to codify a new status quo in Northeast Asia and... MORE