YELTSIN RESTRUCTURES SECURITY SERVICES, PERHAPS WITH AN EYE TO RIVALS.

At the beginning of October, President Yeltsin signed a decree changing the structure of the top echelons of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Under the new structure, the agency will have a director, two first deputy directors, six deputies in charge of the FSB’s various departments and two other deputies–one overseeing the Moscow/Moscow oblast FSB, the other overseeing the St. Petersburg/Leningrad oblast FSB.

In the words of “Profil” magazine, the FSB heads in Moscow and St. Petersburg formerly served “two masters”–the director of the security service and the regional government heads. Given Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s moves toward forming his own political party, FSB chief Vladimir Putin decided to put his own people in charge of the FSB in Russia’s two capitals. They are Lieutenant General Aleksandr Grigorev, who will oversee the St. Petersburg FSB, and Colonel General Aleksandr Tsarenko, who oversees the Moscow FSB. According to “Profil,” “the activities of the capital’s mayor and the St. Petersburg governor [Vladimir Yakovlev] will from now on become the object of the FSB leadership’s rapt attention. Which in the context of the intensification of the political struggle in relation to the approaching presidential elections is highly relevant to the Kremlin” (Profil, October 19).

MORE DEPRESSING STATISTICS.