March 3, 1998  
This Date's Issues:    2089  • 2090

Johnson's Russia List
#2090
3 March 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Anna Dolgov, Yeltsin Merges Security Agencies.
2. Renfrey Clarke: MOSCOW'S METRO SICKENS AS PRIVATE CARS INCREASE.
3. Ira Straus: Re 2089 NATO expansion.
4. Reuters: Communists, nationalists lead in Ukraine polls.
5. Newsweek: 'A Real Man.'
6. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: MINATOM HEAD RESIGNS. 
7. RFE/RL NEWSLINE: DID MIKHAILOV JUMP OR WAS HE PUSHED? 
8. Izvestia: Sergei Chugayev, RUSSIA'S FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL OLYMPUS 
IN FOR NEW TREMORS. 
9. New York Times: Thomas Friedman, Ohio State II. (Re NATO expansion).
10. Moscow Times editorial: Adoption Bill in Need Of Revision. 
11. RIA Novosti: ANATOLY CHUBAIS REMAINS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE 
RUSSIAN FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE.
12. Russky Telegraf: Yuri Golotyuk, AIR FORCE'S NUCLEAR BUTTON MOVED 
OUTSIDE MOSCOW.
13. AP: Russian TV Host's Murder a Mystery. (Listyev).
14. Interfax: Russia Tightens Restrictions On Dual Technologies Export.
15. Moscow Times: Jean MacKenzie, CONFESSIONS OF A RUSSOPHILE: 
The Willies in New Moscow. 
16. Izvestia: Vyacheslav Nikonov, DEAR FRIEND UKRAINE.]

*******

#1
Yeltsin Merges Security Agencies 
By Anna Dolgov
March 3, 1998

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Boris Yeltsin merged three military security
agencies under a new chief today, concentrating and strengthening the
security chief's authority. 
Yeltsin named Andrei Kokoshin, former chief of the Defense Council and
State Military Inspectorate, as new secretary of the Security Council,
Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky said. 
Yeltsin also merged the Defense Council and military inspectorate into
the Security Council under Kokoshin's leadership, in an effort to
streamline Russia's army reform, Yastrzhembsky said. 
``The president's decree is ... aimed at a closer coordination of
efforts toward reforming the whole system of defense and security,''
Yastrzhembsky told reporters. 
Yeltsin is anxious to transform Russia's underpaid and demoralized army
into a leaner professional force, but little progress has been made so far. 
The moves expand the Security Council's role in military policy but may
reduce its prominence on other issues, especially relations with the
breakaway republic of Chechnya. 
The official role of the Russian Security Council is to advise the
president -- much as the National Security Council in the United States --
although it also has handled federal negotiations with Russia's regions. 
In the past, the Security Council was the main organization in charge of
Russia's relations and negotiations with Chechnya, but that responsibility
is expected to be transferred to the Cabinet, Yastrzhembsky said. 
On Monday, the former Security Council chief, Ivan Rybkin, was named
deputy prime minister in charge of relations with other former Soviet
republics and their fractious alliance, the Commonwealth of Independent
States. 
Yastrzhembsky said Rybkin may continue handling relations with Chechnya.
Rybkin has won praise from both sides for his conciliatory approach to
normalizing relations between Russia and Chechnya. 
Chechnya considers itself an independent state, and has been running its
own affairs since its 1994-96 war against Russia. Moscow lost the war and
withdrew, but no government, including Russia's, has recognized Chechnya as
independent. 
The personnel changes are part of a Cabinet shuffle that Yeltsin started
last week. 
So far Yeltsin has dismissed fuel, education and atomic energy
ministers, along with Rybkin's predecessor as deputy premier in charge of
relations with former Soviet republics, Valery Serov. 

********

#2
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 
From: austgreen@glas.apc.org (Renfrey Clarke)
Subject: MOSCOW'S METRO SICKENS AS PRIVATE CARS INCREASE

#MOSCOW'S METRO SICKENS AS PRIVATE CARS INCREASE
#By Renfrey Clarke
#MOSCOW - No-one who has lived without a car in both Moscow and
the West can be wholly cynical about the achievements of Soviet
society. Whether it's twice-daily Sunday bus services to outlying
suburbs of Sydney, or the budget-breaking, user-pays fares on the
London Underground, public transport in the Western world has
long been the target of governments anxious to cut their outlays
and of car-makers out to clean up on people's need for transport.
#Urban transit policies in the USSR at least reflected social
needs. The sparse traffic on Moscow streets decades ago was the
subject of many jibes by foreign correspondents, but millions of
people each day were travelling quickly and conveniently for
small-change fares on the city's underground railway, the metro.
#Much of the charm of the metro remains. The stations are still
clean and safe, and the interval between trains is no more than
eight minutes even late at night. For a standard fare of two
rubles, about 30 US cents, you can travel to any point in the
system.
#But the ways of the West are catching up with Moscow's public
transport showpiece. Rush-hour travel on the metro is now a
succession of unsolicited whole-body embraces. Changing from one
metro line to another often requires standing with hundreds of
other people and patiently inching your way toward a single
escalator.
#Above all, there are now huge built-up tracts in outer Moscow
which are nowhere near a metro line. In Soviet times, residents
of new urban regions used to grumble about the slowness of the
metro in reaching them, but in those days the metro was at least
usually on the way. For today's dwellers on the expanding fringes
of Moscow, the approach of the metro has for practical purposes
come to a halt.
#According to public transport planners, the current metro
network of 261 kilometres is at least 100 kilometres short of the
minimum needed. Big new investments are essential, but revenues
from fares only approximately cover the metro's running costs.
The bill for new construction and re-equipping is supposed to be
met out of federal government grants. And in recent years, these
grants have been cut to a fraction of the sums required.
#In mid-January this year the news emerged that new construction
work on the Moscow metro had come to a complete halt; funds
promised by the government for the first quarter of 1998 had not
materialised. When the money came through, metro construction
chief Nikolai Tarararov told reporters, conservation work would
be carried out to ensure that work performed last year would not
be wasted.
#The halt to metro construction has a special symbolic poignancy
for many Muscovites. Even in December 1941, when Nazi forces were
only a few kilometres beyond the city limits, the building of the
Moscow metro continued. On the ceiling of Novokuznetskaya metro
station, near the city centre, are mosaics that were executed in
besieged Leningrad and transported through the fascist blockade.
#Symbols, however, are presumably not the prime concern of
today's residents of Mitino, a raw-looking spread of high-rise
apartment blocks on Moscow's north-west fringe. Every hour in the
morning peak period, overcrowded buses haul 30,000 Mitino
commuters to metro and rail stations inside the Moscow ring road.
Promised a metro line, which is still marked as ``under
construction'' on the maps in every metro carriage, the commuters
have now learned they will have to wait indefinitely.
#If the federal government lacks money to develop public
transport, might funds be found in the Moscow city budget? Here
it should be pointed out that the city regime of Mayor Yury
Luzhkov has found the money for a string of grandiose prestige
projects, including the US$300 million reconstruction of the
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
#Capitalism, however, does not exist to serve people who cram
into municipal buses in order to get to work, but people who are
driven to their jobs in luxury cars with smoked-glass windows.
What Russia's new rich need is not affordable, convenient public
transport, but quick passage on their own set of wheels.
#In the course of the 1990s the number of vehicles on Moscow
streets has increased by several times. This is not the result of
prosperity (though Moscow is far more prosperous than any other
Russian city), so much as of a combination of pent-up demand and
of increased availability of cars, often cheap used vehicles from
the West.
#The traffic jams in Moscow now rival those of Mexico City, and
for the people behind the smoked-glass windows, getting to
downtown offices each day has become a tedious ordeal.
Accordingly, there are strong pressures on the city authorities
to favour the road system whenever there are funds available to
be spent on transport.
#Alongside conventional plans for new roads and multi-level
intersections is a proposal for turning Moscow's inner rail
freight ring - once mooted for conversion to rail passenger use -
into a highway. More patently self-serving is a plan to build a
27-kilometre, four-lane highway to a settlement in the Odintsovo
region west of Moscow where high-ranking government officials and
wealthy ``new Russians'' have their country houses.
#Although this latter plan would involve demolishing several
apartment blocks and numerous small private houses, cutting down
236,000 trees, and dismantling a passenger rail line, it
reportedly has the support of the Moscow mayor's office, the
regional administration and the federal road service. Local
residents dealt a blow against the scheme last December, when
they voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to oppose closing the
rail line.
#Votes, however, are not usually an important consideration in
Moscow city politics, and in the anterooms of the mayor's office,
public transport users are continuing to lose out to the private
vehicle lobby. The future is easy enough to predict. As the need
to replace equipment in the public transport system becomes
urgent, federal and municipal authorities alike will resist
allotting money. To keep the trains and buses running, fares will
be raised and off-peak services slashed. Users will be told they
have to pay the real cost of the services they receive.
#Muscovites who can afford a car will be forced to buy and drive
one, reducing public transport revenues and prompting further
service cuts and fare increases. The share of municipal finances
spent on maintaining and expanding the overburdened road network
will spiral upwards. For an efficient, unobtrusive and relatively
cheap system, an expensive, polluting, city-strangling
monstrosity will be substituted. Only the car firms will benefit.
#Moscow, in short, seems destined to repeat the experience of
many cities in the West where public vision has lost out to
private greed.
#It would not require any special radicalism for the authorities
in the Russian capital to accept the new wisdom of many city
planners in the West: that prioritising public transport, even if
it has to be subsidised, is the cheap option in the end, and the
only civilised one. But in Moscow, whose rulers lavish money on
cathedrals while worshipping the market, public vision is a
commodity as rare as eggs and sugar in a Soviet food store.

*******

#3
From: "Ira Straus" <iras@rsuh.ru>
Subject: Re: 2089 NATO expansion 
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 

> Of the former Warsaw Pact countries, only Russia has not
applied for entry to NATO. ( NATO expansion faces first U.S. test, By
Jackie Frank, March 2 (Reuters) ) > 

And of the citizens of the U.S., only the readers of JRL know that the
reason why Russia has not applied, in the authoritative statement of its
Foreign Minister, is that it would not be admitted. Such an application
(Primakov went on to say in his remarks that appeared on JRL) would
therefore be a strategic mistake; its real effect would be only to serve as
a green light for NATO to let in all the other countries.

To be sure, there are some prominent Russians who favor applying to join
NATO. Sometimes they have persuaded the government to put out feelers to
NATO on joining. But they have not been able to persuaded the government
actually to make an application to NATO to join. Perhaps this is because
every feeler put out by the government thus far has met with a response
from the West that has validated Primakov's view. 

********

#4
Communists, nationalists lead in Ukraine polls

KIEV, March 2 (Reuters) - Ukraine's opposition Communist and nationalist Rukh
parties top opinion polls in the run-up to a parliamentary election on March
29, a survey released on Monday showed. 
``The leader is the Communist Party of Ukraine. It has strong support in
Crimea and in the east,'' the two polling groups that conducted the survey,
Democratic Initiatives and Socis-Gallup, said in a joint statement. 
The survey gave the Communists 12.9 percent of the vote, up from 11.2
percent
in January. 
Ukraine's eastern industrial rustbelt is home to a large ethnic Russian
minority. 
``Second place, as in previous polls, is taken by Rukh which is most
popular
in the western regions of Ukraine,'' the statement added, giving the party 5.7
percent, down from 9.5 percent in January. 
The west of the republic is predominantly ethnic Ukrainian. 
Leftist parties form the biggest bloc in the now splintered parliament.
Most
polls give parties backing President Leonid Kuchma little chance in the
election as they lag far behind the front-runners. 
The poll, based on responses from 1,800 people, also found the Green
Party --
an active campaigner over environmental damage caused by the 1986 Chernobyl
nuclear disaster -- had moved ahead in popularity with five percent. There was
no comparative figure for January. 
Sixty-five to 68 percent of respondents said they intended to vote in the
elections. 
Last week, the Constitutional Court rejected an appeal filed by a group of
deputies loyal to Kuchma who argued that a new party-list voting system was
unconstitutional. 
The decision was a boost for Ukraine's left wing parties and Rukh, which
have
both mounted strong opposition to Kuchma's struggling reform programme for the
financially ailing ex-Soviet republic. 
According to the new electoral law, 250 seats will be decided by a simple
majority vote in constituencies, as in previous elections in 1991 and 1994. 
The other 250 seats will be elected by a party-list system, the first in
independent Ukraine's seven-year history, in which parties must get more than
four percent of the vote to win places in the Rada, or parliament. 
Thirty political parties and blocs have registered for the party lists
after
each collected the required 200,000 signatures. 
About 6,500 candidates were registered by the Central Electoral
Commission to
run for parliamentary seats in the majority constituencies.

*******

#5
Newsweek
9 March 1998
[for personal use only]
Periscope/Russia: 'A Real Man'

Clinton's approval-rating high of 79 percent at home is nothing compared
with the 98.6 percent he got in Moscow. In an informal survey, the city's
Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper asked its readers to weigh in on the
presidential sex scandal. Most had only praise. "Everything above the waist,
he gives to his country. Below the waist is his own business," wrote V.
Akopyan. Another said: "I was always biased against your country... but now I
see you're a real man. Carry on! Russia supports you!" The paper said it would
forward the letters to Washington.
Lucy Howard and Arlyn Tobias Gajilan with bureau reports

*******

#6
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
3 March 1998

MINATOM HEAD RESIGNS. President Boris Yeltsin yesterday transferred the
long-serving head of the Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM), Viktor
Mikhailov, to an unnamed research position. Sources in the ministry said
that Mikhailov -- who will soon be sixty-four years old -- initiated the
move. (Russian media, March 2) A change in the leadership of this important
ministry could have a far-reaching effect on Russian-American relations.
Mikhailov's relationship with American officials and legislators was a rocky
one. His ministry deals both with the civilian aspects of atomic power and
with Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal. He often ruffled more American
feathers than otherwise in both of these spheres. 

A former weapons designer himself, Mikhailov was a strong advocate for the
development of new Russian nuclear weapons. Recently, he blasted the
government plans to close one of the two weapons design laboratories. Last
year, he tweaked U.S. noses by surreptitiously buying several high-powered
American computers for one of these labs despite a ban on such sales. He was
also tireless in his efforts to export nuclear technology and raw materials,
sometimes signing agreements with countries on the Washington black list --
such as Syria and Iran. 

One of the highest U.S. priorities in international relations has been to
curb nuclear proliferation. Here, Mikhailov has played a contradictory role.
Russia's large nuclear weapons stockpile falls under two jurisdictions: the
military and MINATOM. Although the Ministry of Defense has been surprisingly
cooperative in accepting U.S. help in protecting and monitoring its nuclear
weapons, MINATOM has all too often been less so. Mikhailov did approve of
the program in which the United States will eventually buy 500 tons of
weapons-grade highly enriched uranium derived from dismantled Russian
nuclear weapons, but he has often balked at the implementing negotiations.
Much of his concern has been to protect and expand Russia's role as an
exporter of uranium for research and power-generation purposes. MINATOM is
responsible for the storage and security of weapons components and fissile
material. As more and more Russian nuclear weapons are retired and
disassembled, the MINATOM transportation and storage infrastructure grows
even more overloaded. Mikhailov has denied that there is a problem and has
refused most Western initiatives to help. Officials in Washington are
undoubtedly hoping his successor will be more cooperative.

*******

#7
RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol 2, No. 42, Part I, 3 March 1998

DID MIKHAILOV JUMP OR WAS HE PUSHED? A Russian commentator interviewed by
RFE/RL on 2 March suggested, however, that Mikhailov may have been under
pressure to resign, noting that his ministry was not informed in advance of
his resignation. Andrei Piontkovskii said that Mikhailov, who began his
career at Arzamas-16 under the late Andrei Sakharov, had implemented "his
own personal policy," particularly toward sales of nuclear technology to
Iran, and regarded himself as a "hawk" defending Russia's dwindling
super-power status. But Piontkovsii concluded that the decision to replace
Mikhailov as minister was probably not dictated by foreign-policy
considerations; rather, it is likely to have stemmed either from
disagreements within the ministry over uranium sales to the U.S. or from
personal tensions between Mikhailov and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin. First
Deputy Premier Boris Nemtsov has consistently criticized Mikhailov's
ministry for failing to pay wage arrears to its employees, according to
"Kommersant-Daily" on 3 March. LF

*******

#8
>From RIA Novosti
Izvestia
March 3, 1998 
RUSSIA'S FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL OLYMPUS IN FOR NEW TREMORS
By Sergei CHUGAYEV

The new financial and political alliance that has formed
on the Russian political scene is far ahead of its main rivals
in terms of its influence. This circumstance makes one wonder
whether the nation is in for a new wave of political
instability.
The alliance in question is a union concluded by the
financial and industrial empires of Boris Berezovsky and
Alexander Smolensky, and the groups Most and Menatep. 
Specialists on the staff of the Expert Magazine and the
Expert RA agency assess the political influence commanded by
the new alliance at 65 points. 
Without the alliance, the specialists say that the ratings
of the leading Russian financial and industrial groups are more
or less even: UNEXIM is the leader with 35.44 points, followed
by Gazprom (25.43 points), Menatep (24.77 points), Smolensky's
group (22.23 points), Most (20 points) and Berezovsky's group
(13.96 points). 
But the last four entries on the list have formed an
alliance to radically change the balance of forces. UNEXIM and
Gazprom are now well-nigh outsiders and are unlikely to form a
union of their own. 
Now that the relative parity, which was born in great
pains last fall and which served to stabilise the political
situation for the past six months, has thus changed, a new turf
war for spheres of influence becomes inevitable.
If the expert studies of the financial and industrial
groups are to be trusted, there is every reason to believe that
we will all soon witness a new 'battle of the banks'.

********

#9
New York Times
3 March 1998
[for personal use only]
FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Ohio State II

Last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put on a shameful
performance. Senators Jesse Helms, Joe Biden & Co. rolled over like puppies
having their bellies rubbed when Clinton officials explained their plans
for NATO expansion by dodging all the hard questions. It's too bad CNN
couldn't entice the Clinton team to go out to Ohio State again and hold a
town meeting on NATO expansion. If they did, it would sound like this:
Student: "I've got a question for Secretary of Defense Cohen. When you were
here before, you had a hard time defining what the endgame would be if we
bombed Iraq. What's the endgame of NATO expansion? I mean, if we just admit
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all we will be doing is redividing
Europe slightly to the east. And if we actually do what you advocate,
expand NATO to the Baltic States, up to Russia's border, we will be
redividing NATO, since the British, French and Germans are not ready to go
that far because they know it would be treated by Russia as a strategic
threat." 
Secretary Cohen: "Son, we've got our endgame on NATO figured out just
like we do on Iraq. It's called kick the can down the road and hope it all
works out in the end." 
Student: "National security adviser Berger, you now say NATO expansion
will only cost $1.5 billion over 10 years, when just last year the Pentagon
said it would be $27 billion over 13 years, and the Congressional Budget
Office said it could be $125 billion over 15 years. How come NATO expansion
gets cheaper every day it gets closer to a Senate vote? And how does it get
cheaper when France says it won't pay a dime and the Czech Republic doesn't
own a single advanced fighter jet, so it will need to buy a whole new air
force?" 
Mr. Berger: "Our NATO numbers were prepared by the same accountants who
said the U.S. budget was balanced. I rest my case." 
Student: "Secretary Albright, you say we have to bomb Iraq, because
Saddam has all these weapons of mass destruction. But the Russians have
7,500 long-range nuclear missiles, loose warheads falling off trucks and a
bunch of Dr. Strangelove scientists looking for work. And we have a Start 2
nuclear reduction treaty that the Russians have signed but not implemented
because of resistance in the Russian Parliament to NATO expansion. How
could you put a higher priority on bringing Hungary into NATO than working
with Russia on proliferation?" 
Albright: "Oh, please. You want to blame everything on NATO expansion,
like it's El Niño." 
Student: "I'm sorry, Madame Secretary, but that's not an answer. You keep
dodging this question. You can say that the Russians can't stop NATO
expansion. And you can say that it's worth risking a new cold war to bring
these three countries into NATO. But you can't deny that NATO expansion has
contributed to Russia's refusal to ratify the Start 2 treaty, which is an
enormous loss to U.S. national security." 
War veteran: "Secretary Cohen, I thought we fought the cold war to change
Russia, not to expand NATO. But now that we've changed Russia and should be
consolidating that, you want to expand NATO?" 
Secretary Cohen: "NATO expansion is not directed against Russia. It's
meant to secure the new democracies in East Europe." 
Heckler: "If it's meant to secure democracy in new democracies, isn't the
most important new democracy Russia? And why is your P.R. campaign for NATO
expansion being funded by U.S. arms sellers, who see NATO expansion as
market expansion for their new weapons?" 
Student: "I just got the spring issue of The National Interest magazine.
It contains a letter from George Kennan, the architect of America's
cold-war containment of the Soviet Union and one of our nation's greatest
statesmen. Kennan says NATO expansion is a historic blunder. What do you
all know that he doesn't?" 
Mr. Berger: "I have the greatest respect for Mr. Kennan, but our team has
its own Russia expert, Strobe Talbott, who speaks Russian, has written
books about Russia, and some of his best friends are Russians. He couldn't
possibly be anti-Russian, and he's for NATO expansion." 
Student: "Excuse me, but didn't Talbott write the first memo to Secretary
of State Christopher opposing NATO expansion, because. . . ." 
Bernard Shaw: "Sorry to interrupt. We've got to close." 

********

#10
For more articles from The Moscow Times, check out their website at
www.moscowtimes.ru

Moscow Times
March 3, 1998
EDITORIAL: Adoption Bill in Need Of Revision 

It is hard to think of a more outrageous confusion of the demands of
political ideology and human compassion than is demonstrated in the
amendments to the law on international adoption now before the State Duma. 
In response to the growth in the number of Russian children being
adopted by foreign parents, predominantly from the United States, a draft
law that has passed first reading would impose an effective moratorium on
foreign adoptions by requiring a bilateral treaty with each country to
regulate their operations. 
Although a couple of high-profile cases of child abuse by adoptive U.S.
parents have fuelled claims that foreign parents are in some way less
caring than Russian ones, lawmakers are pushing this measure not primarily
out of any concern for the welfare of the 5,000 or so children involved. 
Rather, nationalist lawmakers seem to be motivated by a warped concern
for "Russia's national security." They fear that Russia's gene pool will be
depleted by the departure of these poor children. 
It may sound trite, but the one and only consideration of how to best
deal with adoption should be to do what is in the children's interests. 
Closing off foreign adoption would simply ensure that these children
remain institutionalized. The evidence shows that this is a road to
delinquency, ill health and drug addiction. 
The present system of international adoption already ensures that
Russian parents have priority access to orphans. Unfortunately, because of
Russia's economic problems, fewer and fewer domestic parents are stepping
forward to take them.Moreover, only foreign parents are willing to consider
adopting older Russian orphans or orphans with physical or emotional
disabilities. 
It would take a very hard heart to wish that children be denied parental
love and kept locked up in institutions for the sole purpose of protecting
some abstract doctrine of national security. 
This is not to say the current legislation on foreign adoption is ideal.
It is highly likely that adoption agencies who take thousands of dollars
from eager parents in the United States are bribing local officials for
priority access to children. 
But the law does nothing to address this very real problem. It raises
penalties for fraud and insists that the relatives of the orphans have a
say in the court hearing where the child is handed over to its foreign
parents. But this latter measure will only deepen the opportunities for
corruption from relatives who in many cases have no close links to the
child. One change in the law that is necessary is to provide for an
independent national body to check up on adoption officials. 

*******

#11
ANATOLY CHUBAIS REMAINS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE RUSSIAN
FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE
MOSCOW, March 3. /RIA Novosti correspondent/. First Deputy
Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais arrived at an expanded meeting of
the Federal Securities Commission held at its Leninsky avenue
office today, surrounded by security guards from the Russian
Federal Security Service. Under yesterday's decree by Russian
President Boris Yeltsin, several top government officials,
including both first deputy prime ministers, were no longer
under the protection of the Federal Security Service. However,
RIA Novosti was told by Chubais' aide Andrei Trapeznikov, the
decree has not been received at Chubais' office. 
Security guards of the Federal Security Service will
continue to perform their duties in protecting Chubais until the
office receives the decree. The exact date on which guards will
be withdrawn remains unknown. 
As reported earlier, the president's decision to stop
allocating security guards to several top government officials
will not apply to Russian Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov. The
security division of the Russian Interior Ministry announced
that Kulikov's security is ensured by Moscow's SOBR special unit
which is directly controlled by the minister. Representatives of
the division said that "the specific functions and the position
of Kulikov requires permanent protection by this unit;
importantly, no additional outlays are needed to carry out."

********

#12
>From RIA Novosti
Russky Telegraf
February 28, 1998
AIR FORCE'S NUCLEAR BUTTON MOVED OUTSIDE MOSCOW
By Yuri GOLOTYUK

On paper, the first stage of the integration of the Air
Force and the Air Defence Force is over. From March 1 on, the
new, integrated Air Force will be controlled from the new
central command post, located in the settlement of Chernoye
outside Moscow on the basis of the old Main Command of the Air
Defence Force. It will be also used to control the air force
element of the national strategic nuclear forces. 
Since the Kremlin is paying much attention to the
maintenance of the high combat readiness of the strategic
triad, believing that the military reform can be safely carried
out under the protection of the nuclear deterrence forces, the
quick and orderly transfer of the Air Force's nuclear button to
Chernoye was controlled by the top leaders of the defence
department. 
Our sources in the Defence Ministry say that this transfer
has been completed, although the integration of the Air Force
and the Air Defence Force is not over yet. But their nuclear
elements can be safely controlled from the new central command
post, which has received all codes to nuclear air bombs and
cruise missiles, and all requisite equipment necessary to give
take-off orders to the long-range bombers at the command of
President Boris Yeltsin.
In principle, the Air Force has always been accorded a
modest role in the national nuclear strategy. The main strike
at the potential enemy was to be delivered with
intercontinental ballistic missiles of the Navy and the
Strategic Missile Force. They have at their disposal some 3,500
and over 5,500 nuclear charges, respectively, while the Air
Force has less than 1,000 nuclear charges. Yet each nuclear
charge of the Air Force is taken into consideration in the 
Operational Plan of the Strategic Nuclear Forces of the Russian
Federation, the basic document enumerating the targets for
nuclear strikes in the case of an all-out war. 
In peacetime, the combat readiness of the long-range
aviation is rather low. At the turn of the 1990s, Russia and
the USA agreed that their strategic bombers would stop flying
with nuclear weapons on board along the borders of the
"potential enemy," as they did during the cold war. The bombers
with nuclear bombs and cruise missiles were also removed from
combat duty on the airfields. 
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the most
combat-ready units of long-range aviation were located abroad -
in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Moscow easily came to an agreement
with Kazakhstan, and 40 Tu-95MS Bear bombers were redeployed to
Russia, while Ukraine demanded 800 million dollars for the
return of the 19 Tu-160 Blackjack and 23 Tu-95 planes. The
talks were deadlocked and these planes have been idling at the
airfields in Priluki and Uzin, and will hardly be used again. 
Today the Russian Air Force has a limited number of
bombers capable of carrying nuclear charges: Tu-160s (only six
planes), Tu-95s and Tu-22MZ Backfire planes. Specialists are
not sure that they would be able to carry all nuclear charges
in case of need.
The Russian military leaders have been saying that they
want to maintain the air force element of the national nuclear
triad and even to raise its combat readiness to a level
enabling them to fulfil the tasks accorded to it in the
Operational Plan. Anatoly Kornukov, appointed chief commander
of the integrated Air Force this past January, stated that
"strategic aviation has always been the main element of the Air
Force and will remain the main element of the integrated Air
Force and the Air Defence Force."
Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev recently said that "the
aviation element of the nuclear triad has a future," which can
be assured by "promising research projects that are making the
Air Force much more effective." It appears that there are no
plans for the purchase of new bombers, since the Ministry has
no funds for this. Consequently, it has been decided to
modernise and prolong the exploitation of the Tu-160 and
Tu-95MS planes until the year 2010.

********

#13
Russian TV Host's Murder a Mystery 
By Sergei Shargorodsky
March 3, 1998

MOSCOW (AP) -- Three years after Russia's most famous contract killing, the
murder of TV host Vladislav Listyev remains unsolved, with no suspects. 
``It's too early to speak of determining specific figures in this
case,'' Yuri Skuratov, the nation's top prosecutor, said Monday. 
But Skuratov said 20 investigators were working on the Listyev case and
insisted that progress was ``evident.'' 
The investigators also have received information from 10 foreign
countries about the business activities of Listyev and his entourage, he
said. 
The 38-year-old Listyev was gunned down outside his home in Moscow on
March 1, 1995. He was one of Russia's most popular TV celebrities and
headed the new Russian Public Television network. 
The case was widely assumed to be a contract killing linked to Listyev's
work and particularly to lucrative TV advertisement contracts. It was the
most famous in a string of deadly attacks aimed at businessmen, legislators
and other prominent Russians. 
The slaying led to the firing of top Moscow police and prosecutors, and
tough talk about the need to crack down on crime. But neither this case nor
many in a series of subsequent slayings of prominent bankers and
politicians have been solved. 
Skuratov reported on these cases to President Boris Yeltsin on Monday --
just a few days after being publicly chastised by the president. 
A stern-faced president summoned Skuratov to the Kremlin on Thursday and
lectured him in front of TV cameras that provided extensive coverage on
evening newscasts. 
He particularly scolded Skuratov for repeated, failed promises to solve
the Listyev case. 
``Despite your continuous assertions that Listyev's case was about to be
solved, this and other cases have practically been buried,'' Yeltsin said. 
``Society is dissatisfied and has openly been voicing its discontent --
through the mass media and through the channels that directly link citizens
with me,'' Yeltsin told Skuratov. ``I insist that you put the prosecutor's
office in order.'' 
On Monday, Skuratov denied Russian media reports that the investigation
in the Listyev case was focusing on unspecified officials close to Yeltsin,
the Interfax news agency reported. 
Skuratov, however, could claim success in cracking the notorious killing
of investigative journalist Dmitry Kholodov. The 27-year-old reporter for
the popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets died in October 1994 when a
briefcase supposedly provided by an informant exploded in his hands at the
newspaper's office. 
At the time, Kholodov was investigating corruption in the military, and
the daily has claimed the murder was linked to his probe. Yeltsin had
pledged to personally oversee the investigation, which came to exemplify
the government's inability to solve contract killings. 
But over recent weeks, police arrested the former head of intelligence
of paratrooper forces and a major and charged both with preparing and
taking part in the Kholodov murder, according to investigators. 

*******

#14
Russia Tightens Restrictions On Dual Technologies Export 

MOSCOW, March 3 (Interfax) - Acting on instructions of Russian President
Boris Yeltsin, the Russian government has tightened restrictions on the
export of dual technologies. 
According to presidential spokesman *Sergei Yastrzhembsky*, information
of all sorts alleging that Russian missile technologies have been turned
over to Iraq was discussed during his talks with the Israeli Trade Minister
Natan Sharansky Monday. 
This subject, the spokesman told journalists Tuesday, "is brought up by
Israeli and U.S. officials quite often," however, "practically always, the
information which is passed on us, proves false." 
Israel and the United States are quite familiar with the Russian
position, according to which "we have not breached and will not breach
international obligations on the nonproliferation of missile technologies,"
Yastrzhembsky said, adding that the Russian special services keeps an eye
on this matter. 
The data handed to Sharansky, "will help the Israeli leadership lift some
fears that, as a rule, stem from disinformation," the spokesman said. 

******

#15
Moscow Times
March 3, 1998 
CONFESSIONS OF A RUSSOPHILE: The Willies in New Moscow 
By Jean MacKenzie 

I'm still a bit young for the crotchety grandparent routine, but I am
increasingly tempted to deliver my own version of the "When I was your age,
I had to walk to school barefoot in the snow" lecture to Moscow newcomers. 
Call me a cultural Luddite, but the New Moscow gives me the willies.
Just browsing through the club and restaurant pages can induce a fit of
depression that only a mega-dose of Dostoevsky can cure. Transvestite bars?
Theme dining? Acid jazz? Help! 
You could say many things about Russia in the old days, but hip it
definitely was not. Bad food, dingy interiors and an almost total absence
of fashion provided the perfect setting for discovering pearls of culture.
Russians were caught in an orgy of suffering, demonstrating their moral
superiority by spurning the decadence of the consumer-driven West. 
Or so we professed to believe. I've always suspected that Soviets spent
more time and energy -- and a greater portion of their disposable income --
accumulating the scarce goodies that occasionally came their way than the
average Novy Russky spends on his fleet of luxury cars. 
But over the decades we, the wide-eyed Western worshippers at the shrine
of Great Russian culture, came to freeze, starve and exalt alongside our
precious Russian friends. We spent our days scrounging for food, waiting
for hours in sub-zero weather for a kilo of Nefertiti oranges, or
subsisting for days on black bread and sardines. 
The evenings belonged to the search for the mysterious Russian soul,
trekking through Moscow's endless courtyards for that oh-so-secret showing
by some obscure artist, or toting our oranges to a friend's house for tea,
vodka and sympathy, not necessarily in that order. 
"It was not a bad thing to feel special," said Michael, who was a
student here in the misty days of the communist yoke. I fully agree with
him. We reveled in our exclusivity -- we, the privileged few who could talk
knowledgeably about blat and dissidenty, who had coded address books and
Russian lovers, who gave up the comforts of the West for a little purifying
pain. 
"We were so sensorially deprived," said Mary, an American with a decade
of Russia experience -- and a Russian spouse -- to her credit. She and I
shared a few laughs the other evening over the oddities of the old days,
when her husband hoarded tires to swap for caviar, and the city was so gray
and cheerless that the neon advertising excesses of Western capitals seemed
like heaven in comparison. 
I think we both understood that what we lacked then in visual or
culinary stimulation we more than made up for in the thrill of being part
of the mystery. 
Deprivation has now given way to wretched excess, and the ranks of the
woolly-headed, dewy-eyed Russophile dinosaurs has been swelled by trendy
young Eurosnobs in search of exotic decadence or golden opportunity. 
We come to make money, to participate in the democratic miracle, to help
with the transformation of Russia. Some of us are still high on the
experience, but I am starting to feel twinges of panic. 
How can I explain to a 20-something business grad whose cultural
reference points are limited to the commodities market and the Hungry Duck
that this is not Russia? 
We laugh at the fast-disappearing old guard, dismissing their
reactionary longings as the inability to cope with the modern era. But the
flag-waving Communists have as much in common with Dostoevsky and
Solzhenitsyn as with Gennady Zyuganov. Fear and suspicion of the West are
an integral part of Russian consciousness, and periods of openness and
liberalism have for centuries alternated with a radical turning inward,
during which the glorifying of all things Russian can be accompanied by
harsh repression. 
I hope that I am being alarmist -- the crotchety old grandma warning of
the decadence of that newfangled music or the dangers of motorcars. Moscow
may, indeed, be on the road to becoming New York or London with onion domes. 
But no one, as far as I know, has yet become rich predicting Russia's
future. I think there's a better-than-even chance that the next few years
will hold twists and turns that we can't even begin to imagine. And judging
from the feverish, live-for-today intensity of the New Russians in all
those hip new clubs, I think they might agree with me. 

********

#16
>From RIA Novosti
Izvestia
March 3, 1998
DEAR FRIEND UKRAINE
By Vyacheslav NIKONOV

If one were to be honest, Russia has no more important
bilateral relations with any country than it has with Ukraine.
And vice versa.
These bilateral relations are crucial for the very
survival and progress of the Community of Independent States,
the economic prospects of the only recently sister-nations, and
the political format of Central and East Europe. 
After the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly
independent states had been drifting farther apart - for known
reasons. Ukraine's vision of Russia's interests had nearly
always been negative; Russia had felt offended. 
Following the signing of the political blanket treaty, the
relations between Russia and Ukraine warmed to a degree that
made possible last week's first ever state visit by the
president of Ukraine to Russia. The visit served to prove the
popular, if not quite political, wisdom: election campaigns in
Ukraine serve to improve its relations with Moscow. 
The logic of political struggle in Ukraine has a
peculiarity to it: one cannot expect to win elections without
the votes of Ukraine's Eastern and Southern parts, largely
populated as they are by ethnic Russians whose pro-Russia
sentiments are known to be strong. 
In 1994, these votes helped Leonid Kuchma triumph over
Leonid Kravchuk who staked on the electorate in Ukraine's
Western parts who are known to have little sympathy for Russia,
to put it mildly. 
But after the election, Kuchma steered his policy in an
opposite direction to win the hearts of Ukraine's 'Westerners':
today, Vyacheslav Chornovil's Narodny Rukh is the strongest
pro-president party. 
The voters in Ukraine's Eastern and Southern parts were so
disillusioned that they are now leaning towards the Socialists
of Supreme Rada speaker Alexander Moroz, the Communists of
Pyotr Simonenko and the alliance of ex-premier Yevgeni Marchuk,
plus the Gromada movement of yet another ex-premier Pavel
Lazarenko. 
The current situation in the parliamentary elections, now
underway, is such that the party of power in Kiev can only
count on getting less than a third of seats in the future Rada,
or parliament. 
Without the necessary minority right of veto, it may fail
to pre-empt amendments to the Constitution to, say, radically
limit the president's powers or staging the next presidential
elections this year, instead of 1999, which would leave the
little-popular Kuchma miserable chances of getting re-elected. 
A veteran politician, Kuchma went to where his potential
voters are, i.e. the pro-Russia electorate. 
The standing of the party of power is not being made any
easier by the economic hardships, which has made the official
Kiev to finally launch the real market transformations and to
stake on the privatisation for money scheme to supply budgetary
revenues. 
But the stocks offered for sale are still awaiting buyers:
there is no money in Ukraine proper and Western capitals have
been fleeing from it in the past few months. 
The president then made a step that seemed impossible only
recently: he okayed Russian capitals' participation in the
privatisation. 
Two days prior to Kuchma's state visit, Kiev was the venue
for the first get-together of Ukraine's leaders with the
potential Russian investors, whose delegation was headed by
Russia's minister of the economy Yakov Urinson. 
The Ukrainian leaders had been stubbornly inviting only
Western business people to attend similar meetings in the 
past. 
These steps to improve trade and economic relations
between Russia and Ukraine, buttressed as they were last Friday
by the ten-year economic agreements signed by the two
presidents, are to be welcomed, of course. 
Moreover, Kuchma proved he was far-sighted enough and bold
politically: better bilateral relations in any field are
opposed by an appreciably large part of Kiev's elite and the
West. 
Things seem to have turned for the better, but times they
are achangin' and it takes more than the willingness to
cooperate economically that Yeltsin and Kuchma demonstrated. No
matter how much the Russian president would want to see Russian
companies invest in Ukraine, they would not want to lose 
money. 
The Kiev meeting has demonstrated that Russian business
people are willing to invest, but Ukraine is yet to offer
adequate conditions. 
Not that Russian companies are expecting lavish benefits
the kind of which were granted recently to South Korea's Daewoo
Corp. by the Ukrainian side. Nor is their enthusiasm whetted by
the latest experience of Gazprom, Russia's mammoth gas
exporter, which is getting not a single red cent for the fuels
it has been supplying to Ukraine. 
The legal basis of the Ukrainian privatisation is by far
too weak, while its legislators and the executive authorities
make contradictory decisions. There are no guarantees for the
loan pay-back or repatriation of profits. 
Russian companies who have tried to uphold their
legitimate interests in Ukrainian courts believe that one is
advised against even trying. 
The stocks offered for sale are meagre, which precludes
the investor's realistic involvement in the management of the
enterprise to be privatised. In effect, the suggested formula
is as follows: Buy our shares and give us the money to develop
and pay our debts with, and feel free to sit back and see us
steer. 
As soon as a Russian investor displays keen interest in an
industry, the conditions for privatising it are immediately
changed to patently make it the losing party. 
One example: as soon as Russian oil companies zeroed in on
the Lisichansk and the Kherson oil refineries, the earlier
agreed prices immediately grew US$ 130 million and US$ 100
million, respectively. The list can be continued. 
In today's world, nobody wants to cooperate with somebody
else only to lose money. Especially with a country the
geopolitical priorities of whose leadership are mostly hostile.
Investments in Ukraine should be surgically precise and
then only on non-discriminatory conditions and provided
adequate guarantees. 
Russia could do with at least a half of the respect the
Ukrainian leaders show to any other country of the world. An
not only in the season of elections, when the support of Buddy
Boris and the Russian capitals and media are vital.

*******