Word: yuri
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...cynical villain by the losers. The communists, who claim the March 26 polls were corrupted, say Pavlovsky fixed Putin's first-round win, just as a few months ago aides to Yevgeni Primakov accused Pavlovsky of a devastating smear campaign against their man and his main ally, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. His admirers are equally categorical. Pavlovsky was quite simply "the brains of the campaign," says Alexander Oslon, another key player in the Putin election team...
More important to his rise, though, was Putin's unprecedented display of support for his Kremlin boss. When Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov began investigating alleged Yeltsin-administration corruption, a videotape showing the investigator cavorting in bed with two prostitutes aired on TV. FSB Director Putin declared it to be authentic. Skuratov was suspended and his investigation shelved. Later on, when Yeltsin was facing impeachment, Putin issued an FSB warning that the articles of impeachment contained "significant mistakes of a legal nature...
...years in the KGB did give Putin rare exposure to the outside world. "Compared to the boneheads in internal repression, he had to be relatively open minded," says a British diplomat. But many Russians still fear the way such a sinister organization twists minds. Putin rehung the plaque of Yuri Andropov at KGB headquarters, and always stoutly defends the organization and his service in it. "Their system of education is so strong that there is no such thing as a former KGB agent," says former army Colonel Viktor Baranets. Today, Putin has surrounded himself with many old spy mates. Says...
That seems a premature judgment about Putin, who is still very much a secret self. "He's a blank sheet of paper," says Duma Deputy Yuri Shchekochikhin. Deliberately maintaining the mystery gives him maximum maneuvering room. Putin knows he wants to be powerful; he wants Russia to be strong, and he wants to preside over its comeback. But he does not know how to do that. Maybe he is too small a man for the job. Maybe even his galvanic will cannot deliver in the face of Russia's enormous failures: his paper powers are vast, but the necessary institutions...
...With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/St. Petersburg