Word: kozyrev
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Just over a year ago in Stockholm, Russia's Foreign Minister delivered a shocking speech announcing a return to empire and cold war. No more Mr. Nice Guy for "Greater Russia," declared Andrei Kozyrev. "The space of the former Soviet Union . . . is essentially a post-imperial space, where Russia has to defend its interests by all available means, including military and economic ones...
...speech created a sensation. Western delegates were stunned -- until Kozyrev explained an hour later that he was playacting. The speech, he said, was one Moscow hard-liners would deliver were they to seize power. He was warning of the dark future awaiting the world should Yeltsin fall...
Well, Yeltsin did not fall. The Soviet-era hard-liners Kozyrev warned against fell. Some are in jail. But now it is Kozyrev himself declaring last week that Russia should keep its troops in neighboring republics: "We should not withdraw from those regions that have been in the sphere of Russian interest for centuries...
...biggest clue as to whether Yeltsin is ready to move closer to the political center will come in his dealings with such radical reformers as Gaidar, Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. The President may decide that the time has come to jettison all or some of them from his team in the interest of building a consensus for reforms that proceed at a slower pace and demand less exacting social sacrifices. Last week he signalled his anger at the nationalists' strong showing by firing his chief legal adviser and the chairman of a television company that...
...bless Poland's membership last August. But two weeks later, he sent a letter to the leading NATO capitals to say Moscow did not approve of enlarging the alliance in the near term. Some experts saw in that the hand of military hard-liners, but Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, a supporter of strong ties with the West, was also quietly warning allied governments against isolating Russia. "We call on East Europeans and NATO to think again," says a senior Russian diplomat, "whether there is much sense in expanding NATO today when neither NATO nor Eastern Europe is threatened by anybody...