Word: kremlins
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After months of denying the obvious, the Kremlin finally came clean last week. Well, partly clean. Declaring his commitment to a "society of truth," but speaking in a painfully slow, sometimes slurred voice, Boris Yeltsin told an interviewer on prime-time TV that he would be having heart surgery at the end of the month. The news was greeted calmly in Moscow and with quiet relief by Western diplomats, who have long said they would like to see either a healthy President or a new one. Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin and National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed, the two most prominent...
Yeltsin's press handlers hailed his interview as a historic break with the Soviet past, when doddering Kremlin leaders were described as having head colds until they suddenly expired. Last month the same officials indignantly denied a TIME report that Yeltsin might go abroad for surgery. Yeltsin's announcement was at best a victory for semi-glasnost. He gave the impression that his heart problems had just been discovered. But he has been a sick man for years, and his need for heart surgery has been apparent to foreign specialists for months. He did not say exactly what the operation...
...very same day, however, the Kremlin had issued a presidential order bidding Lebed "to restore law and order in Grozny the way it existed" before the rebel advance. Yeltsin's intentions were opaque. Was the President giving a green light for the offensive? Or did he want Lebed's peace talks to proceed? Was he purposely pitting officials against each other, or did he know nothing of what was going...
...Chechen fighting ebbed, the Kremlin war continued. On Friday, Lebed announced he would meet with his boss to settle things. Yeltsin initially declined to see his envoy or endorse his blueprint for peace. But later, he reportedly told Lebed by telephone that he generally approved of his initial efforts to end the war and authorized him to hold talks with Chechen rebel leaders on a political accord that would keep Chechnya within the Russian Federation. Lebed headed back to Chechnya over the weekend to work out such a settlement...
Many among the Russian press and public have embraced the retired general's lone efforts to reach peace against the machinations of an evil clique of warmongers, making him the most visible and so far successful challenger for Kremlin ascendancy. But he is not the only aspirant. Anatoli Chubais, the economic reformer who is the President's chief of staff, has stayed out of the Chechen mess while he cements his own powers as "regent" over all presidential decrees and appointments. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who has the constitutional right to succeed Yeltsin in the event of his incapacity...