Renfrey Clarke

  • Boris Yeltsin's media steamroller

    MOSCOW — In Russian warships based in the port of Kaliningrad, the English-language Moscow Tribune reported on April 26, the vote in the April 25 referendum went heavily against President Boris Yeltsin. This was not just a

  • Yeltsin pushes for a 'presidential republic'

    MOSCOW — Within days of claiming victory in his April 25 referendum, Boris Yeltsin was moving ahead with plans to introduce a new constitution that would transform Russia into a "presidential republic". On April 27

  • Vote gives Yeltsin little comfort

    MOSCOW — Sixteen months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the sense that Russia had slipped back into the era of "plebiscite" elections was uncanny. There was only one name on the ballot paper. Voters were

  • Yeltsin prepares second grab for power

    MOSCOW — Russian President Boris Yeltsin has been readying another "presidential coup", to be launched immediately after the April 25 referendum. Unlike his preparations in March for the imposition of "special rule", there

  • Russia flirts with nuclear disaster

    MOSCOW — Russian officials have confirmed that plutonium salts were among the radioactive materials blasted into the atmosphere when a nuclear fuel reprocessing installation in western Siberia exploded on April 6. Although

  • Russia's regions assert their authority

    MOSCOW — As the April 25 referendum approaches, Russian President Boris Yeltsin's authority is crumbling in the country's provinces, regions and constituent republics. Already a persistent feature of Yeltsin's presidency,

  • Referendum new focus for Russian conflict

    MOSCOW, March 30 — Russians will have the chance on April 25 to vote in a referendum on President Boris Yeltsin's "shock therapy" economic policies. In other questions in the parliament-sponsored poll, voters will be asked

  • What will the armed forces do?

    MOSCOW, March 25 — On the fifth day after Russian President Boris Yeltsin decreed "special rule" throughout the country, the local administrations in Russia's provinces and republics were splitting into supporters of the

  • Coup planned with Western support

    MOSCOW — President Boris Yeltsin's attempt to overthrow the Russian constitution was prepared in consultation with Western leaders, and went ahead with their firm support. The coup was not, as the Western media have sought

  • What Yeltsin hopes to achieve

    MOSCOW — For people who follow events in Latin America as well as Russia, there was something strangely familiar about President Yeltsin's March 20 declaration of "special powers". Last April a nearly identical formula

  • Russian crisis: fact and fiction

    MOSCOW — Among television journalists in particular, the practice is quite the norm. You fly in; you get the story; you fly out again. You talk to the people who count, get their statements, frame the interviews with a few

  • Parliament puts Yeltsin on the ropes

    MOSCOW — Amid anguished plaints from liberal ideologues and the indifference of the mass of the population, the Eighth Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation voted on March 12 to strip President Boris