MOSCOW — For months, political crisis has gripped Belarus, the former Soviet republic of 10 million people on Russia's western border. President Alyaksandr Lukashenko, like Russia's Boris Yeltsin in the early autumn of 1993, is
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MOSCOW — After eight months in prison, Russian anti-nuclear activist Aleksandr Nikitin has now had formal charges brought against him. On October 2, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had completed its
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MOSCOW — Electricity generating workers in the Maritime District of Russia's far east are locked in a battle with federal and local authorities to force the payment of long-overdue wages. Power output in the district, whose
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MOSCOW — "Russia's Federal Security Service [FSB] said yesterday that it had observed all relevant legal norms in its arrest and detainment of Alexander Nikitin", an Itar-Tass report on September 11 stated blandly. The security
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MOSCOW — On August 23 leaders of Russia's main coal miners' union, the 780,000-member Russian Union of Coal Industry Workers (Rosugleprof), agreed to suspend a nationwide strike due to begin three days later. Then, shortly
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MOSCOW — Workers at one of Russia's largest atomic power plants won another round late in August in a long-running battle to force management and the government to keep wage payments up to date. Protest action at the Leningrad
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Russian defeat brings hope for peace in ChechnyaMOSCOW — August 1996 seems destined to be remembered as the point when Russians came to accept that their armed forces had lost the war in Chechnya, and when the regime of
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MOSCOW — Coal miners are pressing ahead in a battle to force the government and coal companies to hand over wages that have gone unpaid from as far back as February. During the first week of August, more than 50,000 workers in
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MOSCOW — Ukrainian coal miners began returning to work on July 17 after 14 days of strikes and other protest actions that paralysed the country's coal-producing regions. The miners' key demand was that the government make money
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MOSCOW — On July 9 Russian forces launched a huge new offensive in the republic of Chechnya, putting an end to a shaky six-week cease-fire. With lulls due to bad flying weather, the Russian military has continued pouring bombs
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MOSCOW — In the presidential poll on June 16, Boris Yeltsin gained about 35% of the vote compared with 32 % for his main rival, Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) leader Gennady Zyuganov. Then, within two days,
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MOSCOW — Boris Yeltsin might with justice claim to have pulled off the near-impossible when he took first place in the presidential elections on June 16. Granted, he went nowhere near matching his easy first-round victory of