Yeltsin Sacks Top Aides
Briefly returning to work with a bang, Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Monday slipped out of the hospital, fired some of his top aides and took control of two key government agencies.
It was classic Yeltsin, reports CBS News Senior European Correspondent Tom Fenton. The ailing Russian president made a surprise appearance at the Kremlin, fired his chief of staff with several other top aides and announced a government reorganization.
He told his new chief of staff, Nikolai Bordyuzha, to crack down on government corruption. Then, after a mere three hours in the Kremlin, he went back to the hospital, where he has been undergoing treatment for what aides say is pneumonia.
The point of all this was to show that he is still in charge. But it was not a totally convincing demonstration. Television cameras were allowed to record part of his meeting with his administration. The heavily edited clips shown on the Russian news showed Yeltsin looking puffy and not altogether alert. His words were slurred and hesitant. He was clearly not his old self.
By now, the Russians are getting used to having a part-time President. In the last few years, Yeltsin has been out of the Kremlin more than he has been in.
During the past two weeks, while he has been in the hospital, he has made several pop-up TV appearances -- once with the chief of staff he just fired, and a pro forma appearance with the visiting Chinese president Jiang Zemin. Last Friday, he saw his prime minister, who is really running the country.
No one seems to know how much longer Yeltsin will remain in the hospital. He has had several heart attacks and major heart surgery. Yeltsin's aides says he will remain in office until his term expires in the year 2000. But few here are taking any bets on it.
Taking Yeltsin's axe were Chief of Staff Valentin Yumashev and his deputies Yuri Yarov, Mikhail Komissar and Yevgeny Savostyanov.
Nikolai Bordyuzha, the secretary of the presidential security council, was appointed the new chief of staff, while the other posts remain vacant. Bordyuzha, who will serve in both posts, was chief of the Border Guards before his appointment to the security post earlier this year.
Yakushkin said Yeltsin had dismissed the aides because he was not satisfied with their work. The president was particularly unhappy over the Kremlin's handling of several recent incidents of political extremism, including anti-Semitic remarks by a Communist deputy in the Russian parliament, he said.
"That undermines confidence in the president, and in the government as a whole and that is inadmissible in the current difficult economic situation," the spokesman said.
"Things are not going to well. I'm not satisfied with the work of my administration," Yakushkin quoted the president as telling senior aides.
He said Yeltsin had complained about poor coordination between the "power structures," meaning defense and security miistries or agencies, and the administration.
Yeltsin further said he will oversee the justice ministry and tax police -- without replacing the actual heads.
Yeltsin insists he has no serious health problems and that he remains in control of the government. Presidential aides said last week that doctors were having a hard time persuading him to rest and recover completely from his illness.
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