Word: putin
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...Vladimir Putin may be the man to beat in Russia's presidential election, but first he must get through the Chechnya primary. Russia's parliament on Wednesday scheduled the election to choose Boris Yeltsin's successor for March 26, and the results of December's parliamentary elections suggest that acting president Putin has a commanding lead over his likely rivals - former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and ultra-nationalist fringe candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky. But although Russia's campaign in Chechnya has propelled Putin from obscurity to presidential front-runner, setbacks on the military front could hurt...
...Putin?s years in the KGB, followed by his association with some of the key reformers in the post-communist period raise more questions than they answer. "Although some now say Putin was involved in economic espionage in Western Europe, others say he was a low level political commissar type keeping an eye on the loyalty of Soviet staff," says Meier. "Then there?s a big question mark over his mission in St. Petersburg - whether he, as he claims, had turned into a liberal democrat determined to push the reform program, or had been sent there to keep...
...While his background includes both solid security credentials and an association with Russia?s reformist politicians, it?s clear that the former played the major role in bringing Putin to power - and therein lies a harsh message for the West. Yeltsin had established a working relationship with Washington based on copious infusions of Western cash to shore up his deeply unpopular regime in exchange for Russian compliance with the U.S. agenda on the international stage and lip-service to Western ideas on how the Russian economy should be reformed. But the systematic international humiliation that Yeltsin?s approach brought...
...policemen and recalling that city's heyday as the mayhem capital of the Middle East. The attacks followed weeks of protest by local Islamic militants against Russia's military campaign in Chechnya, which the U.S. warned Sunday could become an albatross around the neck of acting President Vladimir Putin if he's unable to find an exit strategy...
...Although the early phases of the campaign - in which Russian losses were minimal due to a heavy-bombardment strategy - earned then-prime minister Putin unprecedented popularity for a neophyte government official, fierce Chechen resistance has slowed Moscow's momentum and raised the specter of heavy Russian casualties. That could pose a problem for Putin's bid to win the presidency in elections that have been brought forward to March by Boris Yeltsin's resignation. "Putin's people know that as much as the Chechnya campaign has sent his popularity rocketing among Russian voters, it could fall just as quickly...