Word: russias
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Yeltsin sacked Sergei Stepashin last week, few in Russia were surprised. True, Stepashin had been in office only 82 days. But in his jealous protection of his waning presidency, Yeltsin has made the unpredictable predictable. His second move of the day, however, created shock waves. In a seven-minute television address that bade Stepashin farewell, in which his tongue and eyes strained to find the words on the TelePrompTer, Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin, a virtual unknown to most Russians, not only his acting Prime Minister but also his heir. Bestowing his trust in Putin, Yeltsin implored voters...
...Russia's embattled President rose early on Monday to greet Stepashin and Putin at Gorki-9, the presidential dacha outside Moscow. The hour--7:30 a.m.--meant Yeltsin was not seeking a casual conclave. Stepashin and Putin knew what was coming; the shake-up had already surfaced in the Moscow press. Anatoli Chubais--an early Yeltsin ally--had even met with Kremlin aides on Sunday to argue that firing another Prime Minister now, with parliamentary elections set for December and a presidential vote next July, was a dangerous move that could discredit the Kremlin, the government and Russia in general...
...Family has kept a fearful eye on the forces advancing on the Kremlin. Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's mayor and the chief (if undeclared) aspirant to Yeltsin's throne, has long been the Kremlin's top rival. In early August, when Luzhkov's party allied with a bloc of Russia's muscular regional leaders (once loyal Yeltsin vassals), Yeltsin was infuriated. The alliance laid bare how fast and far power was draining from the Kremlin. Luzhkov's courtship of Yevgeni Primakov, the former Prime Minister sacked in May, to lead his party in the Duma campaign further caused Yeltsin to fulminate...
Putin is expected to be confirmed by the Duma this week, but few give him a prayer of becoming Russia's next President. His anointment is less a strategic move in a long-range plan than a sudden turn taken by an enfeebled President preoccupied with survival. "The Kremlin's not playing chess," says Alexander Oslon, Russia's leading pollster. "They're playing checkers--they're living one day at a time." With the end of Yeltsin's second term 10 months away, the Family is beset by fear of humiliation, if not prosecution. ("The Ceausescu scenario," a Kremlin staff...
...financial institution, the Bank of New York. Investigators, tipped off by British authorities, spotted some $4.2 billion flowing through one account in more than 10,000 transactions from October to March of this year. The total could be as high as a staggering $10 billion ? double the size of Russia's latest IMF bailout check. The target of investigators is Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, a shadowy figure with an estimated net worth of over $100 million and the usual mobster r?sum? ? arms trafficking, extortion, prostitution, and now, maybe, money laundering...