KREMLIN PUTS BRAVE FACE ON ELECTORAL DEFEATS.

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin yesterday received fifteen of Russia’s newly-elected regional governors and congratulated them on their victories. (RTR, November 12) Chernomyrdin said the Kremlin was willing to sign power-sharing agreements between the federal center and whichever of Russia’s regions wants to be next to sign such a deal. The prime minister put a brave face on the fact that seven of the fifteen were elected on anti-government platforms. The government is insisting that the newly elected governors of Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Magadan and Kaluga oblasts are experienced and pragmatic managers with whom the center can do business. The Kremlin will admit to being seriously unhappy only about the elections of former vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi in Kursk oblast and of a member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic party in Pskov oblast. (RTR, November 12) As for Rutskoi, he has already gone to Moscow bearing an olive branch. There he astutely paid a courtesy call on Anatoly Chubais and assured the powerful chief of the presidential administration that he will cooperate fully with the federal center. Rutskoi has been taken under the wing of the liberal governor of Nizhni Novgorod, Boris Nemtsov, who attended Rutskoi’s inauguration last weekend and presented the former Air Force general with a saber.

Rybkin in Chechnya for Talks with Resistance Leaders.