Word: ustinov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov was briefing a top-level Nicaraguan delegation over dinner in Moscow earlier this year. Emboldened by vodka, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra demanded of Ustinov, "Are you with us to the end, or will you abandon us to the U.S.?" According to an exSandinista official, Ustinov stared back in stony silence and ignored the question. The next day, however, the Nicaraguans received a formal note from the Foreign Ministry saying that the Soviet Union would honor its ties of friendship and cooperation with the people of Nicaragua. But in the final analysis, the note added...
...mention of Andrei Sakharov's name in French, Chernenko's hand went up to his ear and he looked puzzled. Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, who was seated next to French Transport Minister Charles Fiterman, one of four Communists in Mitterrand's Cabinet, uttered an audible sigh of impatience. When the Russian translation was read by the interpreter, a stir crossed the hall. But Chernenko did not even smile ironically, and 55 minutes later the banquet was over...
...consensus among Western experts today is that although Chernenko quickly collected all the titles that Brezhnev and Andropov held (General Secretary of the Communist Party and President, as well as Chairman of the Defense Council), he in fact merely shares power with Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and Foreign Minister Gromyko. It is the latter who, after more than a quarter-century as the executor of other men's policies, is thought to have been most instrumental in shaping the current hard line. There seems to be no one powerful enough to rein him in. Adam Ulam, director of Harvard...
...resumption of the Geneva arms-reduction talks that the Soviets broke off last November to protest NATO's deployment of new missiles in Europe. Only a few hours before Genscher's arrival, the Soviet news agency TASS published a lengthy interview with Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, in which he warned that the new NATO missiles "increased the probability of a nuclear conflict." In retaliation, Ustinov said, the Soviets had dispatched to U.S. coastal waters additional submarines carrying nuclear missiles that could strike American cities within ten minutes...
...growing evidence that power still is fragmented in the Politburo and the only proposals on which its members can agree are negative actions in the style of the cold war, an era understood and perhaps even relished by oldtimers like Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov. Any challenge to Soviet interests now, whether deploying new NATO missiles or calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire," produces intense response from the uncertain rulers, ranging from the Olympic pull-out to last week's announcement that more Soviet missiles would be placed in East Germany. "Something...