Word: grachev
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...what has gone wrong with their army. Trained to fight, many feel only aversion for the slaughter of fellow countrymen, which their government has forced upon them in Chechnya. They say they dream of one thing: to hear the announcement that President Boris Yeltsin has resigned, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev has been fired, and the new head of state has started negotiations to end the war and bring the troops home. But our men continue to follow orders, shooting and dying, and hope the day will come when the military will never again have to be called on to solve...
Many senior generals accuse Defense Minister Grachev of being a weak, incompetent minister with the mentality of a commander of a troop division rather than of a minister charged with his country's security, who has proved himself skilled only in political intrigues. They fault him for surrounding himself with an entourage of loyal but dull military hacks, for not fighting hard enough to defend the military budget, and for covering up corruption...
...Grachev, whom Yeltsin appointed Defense Minister in 1992 over many generals with more experience, manages to hang on because of his loyalty to his patron. As commander of the Soviet Airborne troops during the attempted coup in 1991, he refused to storm the building where Yeltsin was holed up; in October 1993, when the leaders of Parliament dared to challenge Yeltsin in the streets, he sided with the President. According to people close to the President's office, Grachev even reminded Yeltsin after the October putsch: "Boris Nikolayevich, I have twice saved you." Officers have nicknamed the Defense Minister...
...will he conclude that he has been led into the debacle by those same uniformed loyalists? If so, he will be looking for scapegoats. He may have begun the search last week in the Defense Ministry, which is led by his old comrade General Pavel Grachev. Yeltsin met with Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and parliamentary leaders who had just been added to the top-level Russian Security Council. Afterward, upper-house leader Vladimir Shumeiko reported that they had decided to yank control of the armed forces general staff out of the Defense Ministry and place it directly under the President. This...
...Yeltsin's attempt to use the military to solve a political problem. Many experts see Chechnya's independence bid as an internal security problem and suspect that the use of military force was pushed by the Federal Counterintelligence Service, successor to the KGB. Other senior officers are contemptuous of Grachev, whom they consider a jumped-up parachutist elevated to Defense Minister because he is loyal to Yeltsin, not because he is good...