Word: grachev
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that? He has tried to pay off some of those back salaries, and last week he decreed that only volunteers will be sent to Chechnya, but now he is contemplating another radical move: firing Pavel Grachev, the Minister of Defense who has stood by Yeltsin since the coup in 1991. Fragmented as it is, the military still respects the chain of command, so Yeltsin needs a popular and loyal Defense Minister to keep the top officers in line. Grachev, one of the main culprits of the Chechen misadventure, is highly unpopular, and now his loyalty is in doubt as well...
Last month Grachev was summoned before the Communist-dominated State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament). The Duma wanted an explanation for the slaughter of up to 93 Russian soldiers in a rebel ambush in Chechnya. Grachev publicly decried "all the outrages that are happening in this country" and offered to resign, should the Duma require it. "He was signaling to Yeltsin that his loyalty could not be taken for granted," says the defense analyst. "And he [was] also signaling to the opposition that he might not be all that loyal to Yeltsin anymore...
...table and delivered a furious dressing down to a row of hangdog officers. "What am I to make of you generals?" he barked. "Are you playing games? What have you been doing instead of erecting barriers, strengthening your forces and stopping the rebels?" The generals--Defense Minister Pavel Grachev; Interior Minister Anatoli Kulikov; Andrei Nikolayev, the commander of the Border Guards; and Security Chief Mikhail Barsukov--sat in chastened silence, heads lowered, avoiding eye contact with their outraged commander in chief...
...Secretary of Defense William Perry and Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev agreed on a unique command structure that would allow Russian troops to serve as part of a prospective peacekeeping force for Bosnia. The trick? Instead of placing the 1,000 infantry troops under NATO command, an option unacceptable to Russia after more than four decades of cold war opposition to the alliance, the Russian soldiers would be under American command. However, American orders would be subject to approval by Russian subordinates. A nato diplomat described the unusual arrangement as "a fig leaf...
...Monday's summit, Boris Yeltsin and President Clinton decided to let their military men figure out how best to stage a joint peacekeeping operation in Bosnia. Friday afternoon, Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev and his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of Defense William Perry, agreed on a force of "several thousand." But the two sides failed to resolve the central issue: whether the Russian troops will serve under NATO command. Yuri Zarakhovich reports from Moscow: "Yeltsin cannot afford placing Russian units under Western command -- not on the verge of the elections to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, which...