Word: yeltsin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...architects of all this, meanwhile, were at a safe distance in Cologne, Germany, trying to bring Russia into the peacekeeping fold. Yeltsin came bearing gifts for Clinton meant to "mend ties after a fight": a promise of some flexibility on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that bans "Star Wars"-style missile-defense systems, and a fat folder of recently declassified Russian information on the JFK assassination. "I am among my friends now," Yeltsin announced, and in return, everybody said he looked great. "He walked a bit stiffly, but he was very forceful," offered national security adviser Sandy Berger...
...which most world leaders are plugged into hundreds of sources of information, from CNN to their own intelligence reports, Yeltsin's worldview is shaped largely by a daily press digest of about 17 pages. Whether he looks at it is another matter: a succession of aides have complained that he is loath to read. It is equally hard to persuade him to watch the TV news. Meanwhile the circle of people who have unfettered access to him is strikingly small. The circle consists of his former chief of staff Valentin Yumashev, who still wields enormous influence from the shadows; Yeltsin...
...this, at heart, is how Yeltsin's tragedy has become Russia's. He is no longer a man of the people--certainly not in the political sense. His once broad-reaching vision, for a Russia where all people had a vote and a share in economic prosperity, has been replaced by a narrow and dangerous selfishness. Yeltsin had the political wiles to avoid being impeached this time, but whether he deserved to be impeached or not is still a question many Russians are unhappily discussing...
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott could see a glimmer of progress. Viktor Chernomyrdin, the former Russian Prime Minister whom Boris Yeltsin has appointed as his Kosovo envoy, was inching last Wednesday night toward compromise. Chernomyrdin had signed off on a sketch of what postwar Kosovo's government might look like, and, nearby, a Russian general had spread out a map with lines drawn showing how armed peacekeepers might be deployed. Peace, Talbott hoped, was closer. But then a note was passed into the Kremlin meeting. Yeltsin had just sacked his Prime Minister, Yevgeni Primakov. Chernomyrdin--whom Yeltsin had fired...
Whether Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin or anyone else in the Russian government could refocus was the question now confronting Washington. For five weeks Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has pinned her peace hopes on what she called a "double-magnet" strategy: pulling Russia toward NATO's demands so that it, in turn, would tug Belgrade. But Administration aides were worried that in the current chaos, nobody under Yeltsin "would be left to cut the deal...