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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

The Impotence of the Mighty

15 June, 1999 - 00:00

By Vitaly PORTNYKOV, The Day
Chief of the Department of International Military Cooperation of the Ministry
of Defense of Russia, General Leonid Ivashov allowed himself to scathingly
criticize the Yugoslav settlement plan approved by international mediators
Viktor Chernomyrdin and Martti Ahtisaari. It would have hardly raised eyebrows
had Mr. Chernomyrdin, special envoy of the Russian President, i.e., General
Ivashov's Commander-in-Chief, not been negotiating on behalf of his boss.
It would also have been all right had there not been Yugoslav generals
who did not accept the Chernomyrdin-Ahtisaari peace plan, either. Representatives
of the army which unleashed fratricidal war in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia,
and evicted the Kosovars from their homes, have presented the Serbs the
gift of a few more days (weeks?) of bombing. It would not have caused a
ripple, but now even Russian Foreign Ministry spokesmen are distancing
themselves from the results of Mr. Chernomyrdin's mission.

And what about Mr. Yeltsin? He phoned Chernomyrdin and met Foreign Minister
Ivanov. It seems sometimes that Yeltsin with his penchant for total control
is failing to keep pace with the events he attempts to control. The most
striking example of this is foreign policy. And is it not surreal when
someone who holds no office, was elected nowhere, and appointed by nobody
- Boris Berezovsky - announces at a press conference that "Sergei Stepashin
is not his choice" and agrees to reports that he was involved in the struggle
to control the government (not alone, of course, but together with Diachenko,
Yumashev, and Voloshin)? In what other country is there such a gray cardinal
who convenes press conferences and glows in the limelight? Only Ukraine
can boast such figures, sometimes the same as in Russia.

I think that no matter how energetic Yeltsin may be today, we are dealing
with a regime that is exhausting itself and only seems to be strong, one
that is in fact unable to streamline its own apparatus and can only watch
how its officials try to amass wealth to tide them over after they lose
their posts. But the Russians are even lucky here: their presidential elections
will be held only in the year 2000.

Ukraine is going to witness a similar situation in the next few months.
And let us not forget that, unlike that of Yeltsin, our presidency has
never - and never could have - been really strong.

It could only have seemed so.

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