Does the Duma dare take on Yeltsin?
James Meek Boris Yeltsin ought to be a sitting target. He is old, ill, inarticulate, often confused and sometimes embarrassingly silly. He has presided over ruin and corruption. He only has 15 months left in office, and his approval rating hovers barely above zero. Yet eight years after he was first elected, and despite the bold posturing of his rivals, the Russian president remains the only public politician with the will to take radical action. It is easy for Yeltsin’s rivals to condemn his melodramatic moves — like the sacking yesterday of the popular prime minister Yevgeny Primakov — as the spiteful, desperate blows of a fading ruler addicted to power, who fears and envies any potential competitor more popular than himself. The analysis is probably accurate. Yeltsin’s claim that his new prime ministerial nominee — the undistinguished former interior minister Sergei Stepashin — possesses a so far undetected `energy’ capable of leading the economy to prosperity will certainly sen
