FORMER COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OFFICER TO OVERSEE COSSACK TROOPS.

President Yeltsin has named Lieutenant General Anatoly Semenov to be the first head of a newly created directorate within the presidential administration that will oversee Russia’s two million Cossack troops. Semenov, who has spent much of his career in military intelligence, was until the middle of last year director of counterterrorism in the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK, successor to the KGB). (Krasnaya zvezda, Nezavisimaya gazeta, April 3) Yeltsin created the new directorate in January in an apparent effort to coopt the resurgent Cossack movement, but the movement is not united and several of its leaders have pledged support to Gennady Zyuganov’s presidential campaign. The issue is not only a military one; Cossack communities are agitating for the return of lands confiscated by Stalin and oppose Yeltsin’s efforts to introduce a free market in agricultural land.

Ukraine’s Romanian Neighbor Stonewalls on Treaty.