Defense Chief Can’t Call Yeltsin

When the Russian defense minister, Igor Rodionov, sought to warn President Boris Yeltsin this past week about the precarious state of the Russian army, its aging nuclear command centers and faltering military satellites, he could not speak directly to Yeltsin.

Instead, he wrote a letter. Rodionov told a group of Russian news media executives he cannot call Yeltsin, although he has a direct line that is supposed to link Russia’s commander in chief with his defense minister, according to Vitaly Tretyakov, editor of the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

“There is a direct line,” Rodionov reportedly told the executives in a briefing, “but it is direct only one way. When the president calls me, which he hasn’t done in a long time, I pick up the phone.” But when he calls Yeltsin, Rodionov said, other people answer.

Rodionov’s remark was just the latest indication that Yeltsin, hobbled by illness, remains an isolated and distant figure even at the highest levels of the Russian government. Doubts are again being expressed about whether Yeltsin will be prepared any time soon to take command of his government and launch his second term.

Yeltsin’s poll ratings have plummeted, largely because his government seems unable to pay overdue wages and pensions to millions of people, but also because of his long absence.

Instead of beginning an ambitious second-term agenda, many of Yeltsin’s political allies say, Russia continues to drift, recalling the “years of stagnation” under the ill Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.