Word: yeltsin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Washington has any plans to put dollars into Russia ("Any money you throw in now will go immediately into Swiss banks," says a White House aide), but they do hope to eventually bring Russia to the point where aid will again be an option. While Clinton and Yeltsin work hard to project confidence in public this week, Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers will be trying to help the new Russian government cobble together a plan that will then be sold to the Germans, Japanese and the IMF. If they buy in, Moscow may get a second chance...
What faith can anyone put in Boris Yeltsin's words? Five months ago, the Russian President said Viktor Chernomyrdin was not good enough to be Prime Minister and fired him. Last week he hired him back as the "heavyweight" who could save Russia from collapse...
...obvious conclusion is that neither Yeltsin nor Chernomyrdin nor any of the other figures spinning in and out of the government's revolving door have a firm plan to quell the economic and political chaos. And even if one did, he probably could not muster the political support to make his program stick. There is, at the core of the Yeltsin regime, a vacuum of power and an absence of leadership. Yeltsin seems to be President in name only, a figure so diminished that he was forced onto national TV last Friday to insist, "I'm not going to resign...
Well, yes, in a way. Stepping boldly in to exploit the crisis was money power. Men made rich through political connections in the post-Soviet economy have wielded substantial influence ever since they got rich buying up government assets at bargain prices and two years ago financed Yeltsin's come-from-behind election victory. The reappointment of Chernomyrdin, the ponderous former natural-gas bureaucrat who was for years Yeltsin's most obedient Prime Minister, signals the intention of these rich men to obtain a government that will protect their ill-gotten assets...
...course, they could not have done so without the consent of the man most responsible for the mess, Boris Yeltsin. As the economy crumbled around him, the physically and politically ailing President was more isolated than ever, humiliated and dismissed as irrelevant. Former supporters abandoned him, and some in the outgoing government even raised doubts about the loyalty of his staff. No longer hinting at the possibility of a third term, Yeltsin was left struggling to convince the Russian political establishment that he should serve out the last two years of his term...