Yeltsin Fires Top Military Officials in Crackdown

MOSCOW — President Boris N. Yeltsin’s anti-corruption ax cleaved deeply into the military hierarchy Thursday when he fired the defense minister and chief of staff for failing to reform an army in which “soldiers grow thinner while generals get fatter.”

Yeltsin’s withering ouster of Defense Minister Igor N. Rodionov and Army Chief of Staff Viktor Samsonov was the latest in a flurry of high-level hatchet jobs as the president struggles to appear tough on greed and graft.

On Wednesday, the leadership arrested and interrogated a deputy defense minister, Gen. Konstantin Kobets, who was still hospitalized for treatment of a heart ailment.

Kobets is accused of taking a bribe of more than $240,000 and of illegally storing weapons. Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov said Kobets was taken from his hospital bed to the notorious Lefortovo Prison because of “the gravity of the act he has committed.”

No direct criminal accusations were made against Rodionov or Samsonov, but Yeltsin made clear that he holds them responsible for the sorry state of the armed forces and the rampant abuses of office that have at least 30 generals under investigation by the federal prosecutor.

Self-serving bureaucrats and bribe takers are the wellspring of Russians’ disillusionment with democracy. Many see the historic changes that have swept this country since the collapse of hard-line communism as just another form of plundering the nation to enrich the powerful and privileged.

With his swipe at the military brass, Yeltsin appeared to be reminding his unhappy countrymen that he is serious about fighting injustice.

“I am not just dissatisfied, I am indignant over the state of reforms in the army and the general state of the armed forces,” Yeltsin told a special meeting of the Defense Council before announcing that Rodionov and Samsonov had been sacked. Segments of the president’s enraged comments were shown repeatedly on television.

Gen. Igor Sergeyev, the 59-year-old head of strategic rocket forces, was named acting defense minister. However, it was unclear whether he will be retained long in the post that Yeltsin had transformed into a civilian Cabinet appointment in December when he ordered Rodionov to retire and swap his uniform for a suit.

Samsonov was replaced by Col. Gen. Viktor Chechevatov, 52, commander of the Far Eastern military district.

Corruption allegations have permeated almost every ministry of the Yeltsin government. Reports in the Russian media have claimed that Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin has amassed as much as $5 billion in personal wealth during his four years in office.

In March, Yeltsin slashed through the ranks of more than 50 ministerial heads, committee chairmen and agency chiefs to pare down the unwieldy Cabinet. At the same time that he sent a dozen timeservers into retirement, he promoted two popular regional leaders--Nizhny Novgorod Gov. Boris Y. Nemtsov and Samara Mayor Oleg Sysuyev--and made his disliked but effective chief of staff, Anatoly B. Chubais, a first deputy prime minister alongside Nemtsov.

Many were surprised that Rodionov survived the purge two months ago, as Yeltsin had been highly critical of the defense minister.

Rodionov, 60, had vowed to cut 300,000 troops from the 1.7-million-strong army and to streamline combat divisions while providing them with better arms and training. But he quickly fell victim to the naysaying generals of the central command and bitterly fought against funding cutbacks proposed by the reform-minded Defense Council chief, Yuri M. Baturin.

Yeltsin took Baturin’s side in the very public and vitriolic clash between the defense bigwigs in February, warning Rodionov to get serious about reforming the army and to stop “whining.”

On Thursday, Yeltsin reiterated that military spending was to be reduced to no more than 3.5% of GDP by 2000 from its level of more than 5%.

Although the sacking of the two top defense figures won praise from liberal reformers, Yeltsin’s opponents accused him of punishing scapegoats.

Dismissing Rodionov was “a good maneuver to distract public opinion from the failure of military reform in the country,” said retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, the outspoken former Security Council chief who has made no secret of his wish to succeed Yeltsin as president.

Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov also sought political capital from the shake-up by claiming that Yeltsin was blaming Rodionov for the ruinous state of the armed forces “for which he has only himself to blame.”

State funding for the military has declined drastically since the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, and the nearly two-year war Russia waged against secessionist Chechnya destroyed what little was left of the pride, fighting spirit and credibility of the federal army.