Yeltsin Sends Mixed Messages To Parliament Blames Army Leadership For Setbacks In Chechnya War

President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday defended the offensive in Chechnya before some of his harshest critics in Parliament, but blamed the army leadership for being unprepared and responsible for the heavy casualties.

Yeltsin, in his first lengthy public statement since ordering troops into Chechnya in December, spoke clearly and had no obvious health problems during the hourlong speech. But he named no names, dismissed no commanders for their “failures, setbacks, and mistakes in command” and said he would draw no rash judgments. His aides said he would deliver another address on army reform later, perhaps in two months.

Nor, as many Western diplomats hoped, did Yeltsin offer political negotiations to the leaders of Chechnya, where a 48-hour military truce began on Thursday. There were reports of fighting in Chechnya but it was unclear whether these were exceptions or whether the truce was generally holding.

“The flames of an armed mutiny have not yet been put out in the Chechen republic, and Russian soldiers fulfill their duty in extremely difficult conditions,” Yeltsin said, asking deputies to stand to “honor the memory of our dead fellow countrymen.”

“Such blisters like the Medellin cartel in Colombia, the Golden Triangle in southeast Asia, and the criminal dictatorship in Chechnya do not disappear by themselves,” he said, defending his decision to use force. “To preserve its sovereignty and integrity the state can and must use the force of power.”

In his second annual address to Parliament, televised nationwide on Thursday morning, Yeltsin ran through Russia’s many difficulties in a steady monotone. At a time when new questions have been raised about his health and known fondness for alcohol, the 64-year-old president strode deliberately and firmly to and from the Kremlin podium.

His performance contained little spontaneity, and Yeltsin rarely raised his eyes from his text. His speech, which was coolly received by deputies and unbroken by applause, contained many exhortations but little new policy.

Yeltsin committed himself to holding elections on time as required by the constitution, with new parliamentary elections scheduled for December and a presidential vote in June 1996.

But if Yeltsin’s intention was to restart his presidency and inspire the support of Parliament, the speech was no great success. The speech had been written by a group of liberal Yeltsin advisers and then edited by conservatives, and its ambivalence was clear.

Yeltsin recommitted himself to economic reform and lower inflation. After two failures, a “third attempt to halt inflation must succeed” because Russians and Western agencies like the International Monetary Fund “expect this from us,” not least as the price of a vital $6.25-billion loan.

Yeltsin also repeated his opposition to NATO expansion, whereby “the West supposedly intends to protect the East European countries from the so-called sinister plans of Moscow,” he said. But “no such plans exist.”

He warned the West not to delay partnership with Russia as an excuse “to remove a potential competitor.” And he called for a “real and equal partnership” with the United States.

Yeltsin promised more protection for domestic industry and said the state must still subsidize agriculture, which remains almost entirely unreformed since 1991. He urged restraint on spending, but said the government must find ways to restore the inflation-ravaged savings of millions of Russians, to fund the military budget and to raise salaries to better match the high cost of living - a prescription for more inflation.

Yeltsin spoke of the “new poor, of people who still hold jobs but who get humiliatingly low wages, with delays moreover,” without explaining that many factory directors bank their profits or play currency markets instead of paying workers, and then demand new subsidies from the state. He spoke of the plight of coal miners, who are threatening a nationwide strike and who will need to be pacified, Yeltsin’s aides say, with a $600-million payment not fully accounted for in an already shaky 1995 budget.

“The social costs of economic policy are still too high,” Yeltsin said, urging a nationwide minimum standard of living, and saying, “1995 must become the year of filling economic reform with social content.” But since he first made the same plea, after the ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s electoral success in December 1993, the government has done little to change its spending to reduce support of production and create a social-safety net.

Yeltsin also railed against crime and corruption, especially in the huge bureaucracy that has long bedeviled Russia.

At the same time, his own presidential apparatus, a type of court, has grown to include several thousand bureaucrats and other personnel who are seeking ways to finance themselves outside the budget and the scrutiny of Parliament.

Yeltsin blamed soft sentencing and weak judges for crime, though judges argue that the many laws needed to deal with the new world of economic crime have never been passed, and so cannot be enforced.

The speech and accompanying policy document were prepared by liberal Yeltsin aides, said Otto Latsis of Izvestia and a member of Yeltsin’s Presidential Council. “The text is one story, and real political life can be another,” he said. “The problem is that we can’t speak of the government or even the president’s own team as unified,” acknowledging the speech’s mixed messages.

“After Chechnya,” Latsis said, “people don’t want speeches but some action. Elections are coming and people want results - not what is to be done, but what will be done.”

Kronid Lyubarsky, an editor and analyst at the weekly Novoye Vremya said: “This speech won’t have the slightest impact. Yeltsin used only the most general phrasing and said nothing concrete.”