Word: stepashin
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Dates: during 1999-1999
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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...
...trying to govern years ago ?- instead, like some giddy czar in a Lewis Carroll nightmare, he simply reminds Russia of his authority every few months by rousing himself long enough to lop off the head of his government, before returning to the hospital or sanatorium. The latest victim: Sergei Stepashin, a bumbling but loyal bureaucrat who served a full three months as prime minister. Of course, with a secessionist rebellion underway in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, there may be some good reasons for getting rid of Stepashin. After all, he authored Moscow?s clumsily brutal, yet ineffective, response...
...Sergei Stepashin is in it again. When the former secret policeman was made Prime Minister of Russia back in May, he wasn?t supposed to have much to do except cover Boris Yeltsin?s ample backside and make the usual feeble attempts at halting Russia?s economic dissolution. Suddenly he?s got a war to win, and it?s a war that Stepashin has lost before. In Dagestani, a provivce that borders on Chechnya in Russia?s mountainous (and mostly Muslim) north Caucasus region, a rebel force is trying to join its Chechen neighbors in achieving a de facto independence...
Inside Russia?s military, Stepashin is still reviled for sending a covert team into Chechnya during the conflict there and then abandoning them when the operation went sour. Which may explain why Stepashin, after flying to the Dagestani capital Makhachkala under Yeltsin's orders and meeting with local officials, had very little to say on strategic matters. But he?d better have the military behind him now. The fighting, which intensified early Saturday when the militants (who may in fact be Chechens) crossed into Dagestan and began taking up positions around local villages, is the worst in the region since...
...mental lucidity are often open to question. After dismissing Primakov last week, he seemed confused. The chairs of both houses of parliament say that when Yeltsin phoned to inform them of Primakov's dismissal, he told them his new nominee would be Nikolai Aksenenko, the Railways Minister. Shortly afterward, Stepashin's name was formally announced. His aides brushed off the gaffe--they have become such masters of explanation that justifying a President who couldn't remember the name of the man he wanted for Prime Minister...