PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION WILL APPOINT RUSSIAN AGENTS ABROAD.

According to an article in the May 19 Moskovsky komsomolets, Yeltsin’s administration is creating a Soviet-style international department within its ranks to rule on appointments of intelligence officers abroad. The paper said that this new body will be based on the Presidential Administration’s own Commission on Questions of Citizenship or the Russian government’s Commission for Ties with Co-Ethnics Abroad. (If the latter, the new body would seem to provide evidence to those who believe Moscow is using Russian Ethnics abroad as a fifth column.) The paper concludes: “Step by step, the reorganization of the structure of the president’s administration ever more recalls the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee.”

Yeltsin Establishes Fund to Retrieve Russian Art from Abroad.