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Russian gas monopoly Gazprom says it will cut gas supplies to neighbouring Ukraine unless a $1.3bn (£650m) bill is paid this month. Previous disputes between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies have led to cuts in gas deliveries to Europe. Gazprom said Ukraine had taken no action despite repeated requests and warned it would be forced to decrease deliveries if the debt was not settled. State-controlled Gazprom said it had informed European clients. Gazprom's threat comes two days after parliamentary elections in Ukraine. No clear winner has emerged as rival parties claim victory. "Bearing in mind the approaching winter season...

TALLINN - Doudou Diene, the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, has recommended that Estonia move toward a multilingual society with more than one official language. Diene, who is drawing up a report on the Baltic states due to be delivered next year, told reporters Sep. 28 that Estonia should move toward a multicultural and multilingual society. "The requirement to be able to speak Estonian is normal," said the Senegalese, adding that all Estonian citizens had to be able to speak the language. At the same time, the special rapporteur added...

Murders, shoot-outs in the streets and "mop-up operations" shatter island of stability. By Umalt Dudayev in Karabulak (CRS No. 412, 27-Sept-07) The scene at the entrance to Ingushetia's second-largest town Karabulak is menacing. The traffic checkpoint has been reinforced and is now manned by federal troops in armoured vehicles. The road is obstructed by concrete blocks forcing drivers to weave around before approaching the striped barrier, where a warning sign says, "Drivers, stop! Turn off your engine and allow your car to be inspected." An armoured personnel carrier covers the road while soldiers and policemen select vehicles, check the passengers'...

TALLINN/VILNIUS - Estonia's ruling Reform Party is preparing an amendment to allow people to vote by mobile telephone. The party presented its ‘m-voting’ proposals Sep. 27 in order to prepare a bill along with its other coalition partners next week. If the partners give the initiative the thumbs up the legislation will be sent to parliament. The head of the Reformist faction, Keit Pentus, said Estonia has always been at the forefront of information technology innovation. In her words, the use of an ID card linked to a cell phone is no longer fantasy, and m-voting would make involvement in...

MOSCOW, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned Russians on Wednesday of the risk of a rebirth of Stalinism, saying their country was in danger of forgetting its tragic past. "We should remember those who suffered, because this a lesson for all of us," Gorbachev told a conference marking 70 years since the start of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Great Terror. "We must squeeze Stalinism out of ourselves, not in single drops but by the glass or bucket," Gorbachev added. "There are those saying Stalin's rule was the Golden Age, while (Nikita) Khrushchev's thaw was sheer utopia...

September 26, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Corruption is getting worse in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union thanks in part to the growing influence of Russia. That's the view of Miklos Marschall, regional director for Europe and Central Asia at Transparency International. Marschall was talking to RFE/RL about the global corruption watchdog's new report issued today, The Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks 180 countries on their degree of corruption as seen by business people and experts. Marschall said there was no improvement overall in the region partly because there was less political will for reforms. "Wherever there is...

Norway's Foreign Ministry has been sending financial aid to controversial religious schools in Pakistan. Researchers and local Pakistani experts want it to stop, as does a conservative politician. As much as NOK 6 million (more than USD 1 million) has gone to 118 so-called "Koran schools" in northwest Pakistan. Some local experts, however, fear Norway risks supporting fundamentalist groups because it makes no demands on the schools' curriculum. Karin Ask, a researcher at the Christian Michelsen Institute, told newspaper Dagsavisen that Norway could wind up even supporting jihadists, those encouraging holy war. The research institution International Crisis Group (ICG) also...

They've been accused of illegal behavior ranging from harassment of diplomats to violent mob attacks. But with State Duma elections just months away, activists from the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi are teaming up with city police to keep the streets quiet. Critics have accused authorities of turning a blind eye as Nashi's members intimidate political foes. But last week, Nashi began mobilizing brigades of volunteers trained by city police to enforce public order. Some 200 Nashi activists, accompanied by actual police officers, have already begun patrolling the streets, wearing red armbands to show their status as druzhinniki, members of a...

September 22 marks the Day of Resistance in Estonia. The holiday was re-named this year after decades when it was known as The Day of the Struggle Against Fascism. The different interpretations between ethnic Russians and Estonians in the country are causing tensions. The Soviet army entered Tallinn on September 22, 1944, and this day has gone down in history two very different ways. For Russians it is known as the day the city was freed from fascism. For Estonians it is the day when almost 50 years of Soviet occupation began. The date was officially re-named this year and...

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Estonia decided Thursday it will not allow a German-Russian consortium to conduct a survey of its exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea for a planned underwater gas pipeline. The survey was necessary for a possible rerouting of the 750-mile pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. "Each coastal country has full sovereignty and a right to make decision involving its own waters," Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said in a news conference. "Furthermore, we think the Baltic Sea is not a proper place for such a pipeline." Estonia's refusal...

MOSCOW (AP) — The sole suspect in the radiation poisoning death of a former KGB agent announced plans to run for parliament Sunday on the ticket of a pro-Kremlin ultranationalist party. Andrei Lugovoi, another former KGB officer who met with Alexander Litvinenko at a London hotel bar on Nov. 1 hours before Litvinenko fell ill, told state-run Russia Today television that he had no desire to go into politics but changed his mind because of British accusations. Now a Moscow businessman who runs a private security agency, Lugovoi said Sunday that he would be No. 2 on the list of...

September 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The Economic Freedom Network, a global association of research and educational institutes, has just issued its annual report, which rates only one former communist country among the world's top nations with policies that support economic freedom. That country is Estonia. The report has high praise for Estonia, whose economy grew by over 11 percent in 2006. It notes that Estonia performed better not only in comparison with its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, but also placed ahead of countries like France and Germany -- not to mention Belgium, Ukraine, or Russia, which are near the...

TBILISI (Reuters) - A plane from Russia dropped the missile which landed in Georgia last week, experts from the United States, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania said on Wednesday after conducting an investigation at Tbilisi's request. Their report was issued a day before a Russian team was to start its own investigation into the incident, in which the missile landed in a field near a Georgian farming village but did not explode. There were no casualties. The incident reignited feuding between Russia and its pro-Western neighbor. Last year, Russia cut transport, diplomatic and some trade links after a spying row but...

MOSCOW: Russian prosecutors are investigating a video posted on several ultranationalist Web sites that appears to show the brutal execution of two men from Central Asia and the Caucasus — and the beheading of one of them. The video, which was posted on the Web site of a Russian organization calling itself National Socialism/White Power along with other more common Web sites, shows two men kneeling on the ground with their arms and legs tied up. "We were arrested by Russian national socialists," they say in barely audible voices. A subtitle on the video identifies the two as "colonists from...

Prague (dpa) - Daniel Novy, a spokesman for the Czech embassy in Washington, did not celebrate when US President George W Bush signed into law a bill that introduces new rules for visa-free travel to the United States. "It is the way it is," Novy tells Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa matter-of-factly. "It is neither a complete victory nor a complete defeat." That is the gist of what the Czech Republic and five other former communist nations - Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia - said in a recent statement. They billed the new US visa rules a step in the right...

In the post-Soviet era, several former communist countries have enacted pro-capitalist, free market policies that are fueling tremendous economic growth and freedom. This week, Estonia's former prime minister explained the economic miracle that is his country - a country of 17,400 square miles and 1.4 million people with an economy that outshines many of its larger European neighbors. Mart Laar became Estonia's prime minister in 1992. His country was then in shambles, having been ruled by the Soviet Union for 51 years. Shops stood abandoned, housing and highways were crumbling, infrastructure was crippled. It was, in some ways, reminiscent of...

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - A Russian jet violated Estonia's airspace twice during one flight, military officials in the Baltic state said Tuesday. The Tu-154 jet, en route to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, first crossed into Estonian airspace in the vicinity of the island of Naissaar, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the capital Tallinn late Monday, military officials said in a statement. The violation lasted four minutes, they added. The same plane re-entered the Baltic nation's air space a little later _ this time for about one minute _ near the western island of Osmussaar, the military said....

In perhaps the most direct challenge by any nation to Euro-Atlantic security since the end of the cold war, President Vladimir Putin has threatened to target European capitals with nuclear weapons and veto a United Nations resolution on the status of Kosovo - the culmination of 15 years of effort by the international community to create a lasting foundation for peace in the Balkans. Russia has also threatened to withdraw from the treaties limiting nuclear and conventional force deployments in Europe. Moscow refuses to extradite a Russian agent accused in a British court of assassinating a Kremlin political opponent in...

PRAGUE, June 5, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves spoke today with RFE/RL correspondents Jeffrey Donovan and Irena Chalupa about his country's vulnerability after weeks of cyberattacks and Estonia's relations with Russia. RFE/RL: Your country has had a lot of attention recently, given this story about moving the Soviet monument and then the cyberattacks on Estonian computer systems. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Toomas Hendrik Ilves: I don't know where to begin. Certainly, we saw the use of massive cyberattacks against state institutions, as well as private sites, including banks. Initially, you could...

The Russian authorities have been accused of buying time on illegal botnets to launch a denial-of-service attack against Estonia. The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA), which comprises arms groups and financial services companies, claims to have uncovered evidence of alleged collusion between Russia and the botnet owners. ATCA said that the botnets were only rented for a short period to boost the number of attacking computers to over a million. Russia has consistently denied any involvement in the attacks. "The attackers used a giant network of enslaved computers on 9 May, perhaps as many as one million in places as...