Word: yeltsin
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...boyars. Much the same sort of tale seemed to be unfolding as a rapid-fire Kremlin drama last week. It began on Tuesday, two days after the initial round of the presidential elections in which retired Lieut. General Alexander Lebed made a surprisingly strong third-place finish and Boris Yeltsin came in first. In Yeltsin's office that day, Lebed, 46, a hero in a dark business suit, perched stiffly on the edge of an ornate chair. With a flourish, Yeltsin signed a decree, tucked it into a green cardboard folder and handed it to the general...
With that pen stroke, Yeltsin had hired the tough-talking maverick paratrooper for two jobs: the President's top national security adviser and secretary of the Kremlin's Security Council, which coordinates foreign and domestic policy. "This is not just an appointment," Yeltsin told reporters. "This is a union of two politicians and two programs. I will now make corrections in my own program in the areas of military reform, national security and the battle against crime and corruption...
...course, Lebed's appointment to the Yeltsin team was an election move. Yeltsin, who took 35% of the vote last week, faces a runoff on July 3 against Communist Party leader Gennadi Zyuganov, who received 32%. If Yeltsin can pull in most of the 14.7% Lebed collected, plus a few more percentage points from the seven other defeated candidates, he should be able to engineer a victory. Zyuganov has been campaigning for five months, still unable to boost the Communists' vote total above the one-third mark they received in the parliamentary elections last December. But the sudden alliance with...
First, on Lebed's demand, Yeltsin fired his loyal but hugely unpopular Defense Minister, Pavel Grachev. Then on Thursday the President purged three more hard-liners, including the man closest to him, his drinking buddy and tennis partner Lieut. General Alexander Korzhakov, who served as chief of security. The firings amounted to an almost clean sweep of the so-called Kremlin war party, an inner circle of authoritarian, antireform power brokers. Their departure could lead to a quicker end to the war in Chechnya, which the fired officials had originally urged on Yeltsin, and a return to influence for some...
MOSCOW: President Boris Yeltsin fired three of the most powerful men in his administration on Thursday over what aides charged was a constant pattern of interference in Yeltsin's election campaign. Alexander Korzhakov, head of Yeltsin's personal security; Mikhail Barsukov, head of the Federal Security Service; and Oleg Soskovets, the first deputy prime minister, had formed a powerful clique within the Kremlin, but crossed the line when they arrested two of Yeltsin's campaign aides late Wednesday. Television stations picked up the story within hours, agitating the already nervous capitol. One of the aides, after his release Thursday morning...