Word: yeltsin
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...Grozny last week. Unintimidated by Russian threats to "unconditionally eliminate" Chechen leader Jokar Dudayev, the rebels are holding the remainder of the hostages, demanding that the Russian government release the bodies of fighters killed during the assault. Chechen morale has risen dramatically since the strike into Dagestan, despite Yeltsin's tough talk...
...elections," Yeltsin said last week, "it will be not for the sake of power but for the sake of Russia. I do not need power, but it is necessary to prevent a deviation from the [reform] path the country has taken." Since Russia's reformist future is clearly at risk from communists and nationalists, that statement provides a good indication that Yeltsin will be a candidate. The strongest challenge to the reformers comes from a restructured Communist Party that rose from oblivion to win the most votes in the Dec. 17 elections for the Duma, the national parliament. Although...
Russia's pernicious internal rebellion, however, is the most serious nettle for Yeltsin's presidential prospects. Thirteen months of war there has cost 30,000 lives, left 600,000 homeless and deeply undermined the public's confidence in both its politicians and its military leadership. With the new hostage crisis came television images of frightened, exhausted women and children peering from the shattered windows of rebel buses, all of which stoked Russians' anger about the war--and Yeltsin's inability to end it. The main point of his televised scolding of the generals was to deflect that discontent toward...
Even if that quiets the immediate discontent, however, Chechnya is Yeltsin's weak point, and his challengers sense it. Lebed criticized the Kremlin's handling of the hostage crisis and warned that "there was no guarantee it won't happen again." In his declaration speech Zhirinovsky demanded, "End the war in the Caucasus! If you don't burn the rebels' bases with napalm, then you, Boris Nikolayevich, will lose the election on June 16, and I will do it on July 1!" Though crude, the threat contained a simple truth: the war in Chechnya mars any Yeltsin-image makeover, however...
Russian President Boris Yeltsin named the country's former top spymaster, Yevgeny Primakov, as the new Foreign Minister. Primakov, a specialist on the Middle East, succeeds Andrei Kozyrev, the liberal Foreign Minister who resigned last week...