Word: zil
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...near Moscow had prepared carefully for the big day last August. They had even built a special staircase to spare their distinguished visitor the indignity of climbing down a hill to the potato fields below the main road. Mikhail Gorbachev would have none of it. Stepping out of his ZIL limousine, he gave the staircase a dismissive wave and scrambled down the steep incline in his neatly pressed gray business suit, leaving his surprised entourage to run after him in full view of television cameras...
...rush-hour traffic on Moscow's broad boulevards was moving at a crawl when the convoys of black ZIL limousines, amber lights gleaming, appeared out of the morning mist. The motorcades whipped by at 70 m.p.h., down empty center lanes marked off for official traffic. The more than 300 members of the Communist Party's Central Committee were on their way to the Kremlin for their annual winter session. All of them but one. There was no hint of the whereabouts of the Soviet Union's head of state, Yuri Andropov, 69, who had not been seen...
...more interested in a drama that was being played out along Kalinin Prospect, the broad boulevard that leads to the Kremlin. There, Western diplomats last week were atwitter over the reappearance of a morning-and-evening official convoy that has not been seen for nearly four months: two black ZIL limousines, the sort reserved for the Soviet elite, protected front and rear by Volga security sedans. Atop one of the ZILs were red and blue lights, apparently an indication that Andropov was inside. He has not been seen in public since Aug. 18, a protracted absence that has been unconvincingly...
...acting on his behalf, performed a full range of ceremonial chores last week. Telegrams were sent to North Korean Leader Kim II Sung, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and French President Francois Mitterrand. At the same time, a number of Muscovites claimed to have seen Brezhnev's black ZIL limousine, security abreast, speeding toward the Kremlin. One unidentified Russian also reported seeing the Soviet leader visiting the Granovsky Street clinic in Moscow, where Brezhnev is customarily examined by his doctors...
Still, Muscovites could scarcely fail to notice that Brezhnev's highly conspicuous black ZIL limousine was no longer speeding down the center lane of Kutuzovsky Prospekt around 10:15 every morning, taking the leader from his suburban dacha to his Kremlin office. Significantly, TASS reported that a visit to Moscow by South Yemen President Ali Nasser Muhammad had been canceled two days before he was to have met with Brezhnev. Reports that Brezhnev had been taken to the gray, five-story Kremlin clinic reserved for Soviet leaders were reinforced when the clinic's director, Cardiologist Yevgeni Chazov, canceled...