Word: yeltsin
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...speech created a sensation. Western delegates were stunned -- until Kozyrev explained an hour later that he was playacting. The speech, he said, was one Moscow hard-liners would deliver were they to seize power. He was warning of the dark future awaiting the world should Yeltsin fall...
...Well, Yeltsin did not fall. The Soviet-era hard-liners Kozyrev warned against fell. Some are in jail. But now it is Kozyrev himself declaring last week that Russia should keep its troops in neighboring republics: "We should not withdraw from those regions that have been in the sphere of Russian interest for centuries...
...this is acutely embarrassing for Clinton, who had trumpeted Yeltsin's commitment to reform during his Moscow visit. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, in particular, waxed enthusiastic about the assurances he had received that reform would continue. Assurances from whom? From the doomed Gaidar and Fyodorov, with whom Bentsen had excellent meetings...
...people have spoken, and Yeltsin has listened. Clinton has not. He keeps campaigning for Russian democracy, but he refuses to acknowledge what the people voted for in a democratic election. Why did Clinton spend so much of his Moscow trip cheerleading for economic reform? That is Yeltsin's job. Why should an American President expose himself and his country to blame for the suffering such reform inevitably brings...
...same token, now that the Russian people have spoken, it is time to change our attitude to Russia's foreign policy too. During the fight to the , finish between the Soviet-era Congress and Yeltsin, it made sense for the U.S. to back him to the hilt. That meant bending over backward not to offend Russian nationalism: leaning hard on Ukraine to disarm; raising no fuss when Russian troops intervened in Georgia, Tajikistan and Moldova; keeping the East Europeans out of NATO...