Word: minsk
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Boris Yeltsin and friends seem to be losing their enthusiasm for Minsk. When the leaders of the three Slavic republics announced the replacement of the Soviet Union by a Commonwealth of Independent States on Dec. 8, they declared that the Commonwealth's seat of government would be Minsk. Minsk? Minsk, the capital of Belorussia, is 400 miles southwest of Moscow. It was a way of signaling the break between the old union and the new Commonwealth...
...Commonwealth itself seems to be faltering, and talk of moving the central functions of government to Minsk is dying out. Perhaps disagreements among the various republics are proving too great for any form of union. Perhaps Minsk was just a tactical bluff all along. Or perhaps someone has looked at a map, thought about Chekhov's three sisters yearning for Moscow, and decided that life in Minsk is too high a price to pay for a rhetorical flourish...
...Minsk meeting, the new states made a little progress. They agreed that the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the former Strategic Rocket Forces -- renamed the Strategic Deterrent Force -- will be centrally controlled by the Commonwealth. Over the next few years, three of the four states with nuclear weapons on their soil -- Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan -- are expected to destroy them or hand them over to the fourth, Russia...
...Minsk conferees made less headway on the former Soviet conventional forces and weaponry. The numbers are still gigantic: 3.7 million men in uniform, more than 10,000 combat aircraft, 56,000 tanks, nearly 90,000 artillery pieces, 800 warships. Russian President Boris Yeltsin argued for central control over all this too, but Ukraine, Moldavia and Azerbaijan insisted that they had to have their own national armies. Most Soviet naval bases were in Russia, but Ukraine was quick to claim the Black Sea Fleet, which had its home port in Ukraine's Sevastopol. Without warning, Russia ordered the newest aircraft carrier...
...will certainly go on for years. Yeltsin, master of the largest and richest state, has a clear edge in the bargaining, if territorial possession counts. The other Commonwealth members are so hostile to central government that they refused to designate a capital and created only an administrative hub in Minsk. By pointing out that Russia is just another state and Moscow just another city, Yeltsin can continue gathering up most of the pieces of the fallen giants, the Soviet Union and its Communist Party...