LEBED BOWS OUT WITH A BANG.

In what was probably the last of his many interviews while in uniform, now-retired Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Lebed told Obshchaya gazeta (no. 25) that he would “love to return to the military but never to Grachev’s military.” In other remarks, he compared Yeltsin’s security aide Oleg Lobov to an ignorant student fearful of examinations and the new commander of the 14th Russian army in Moldova’s Transdniestr region as “either overconfident or simply incapable of understanding the situation” there. (Lebed’s replacement told Russian radio June 22 that he had the situation of both the army and its enormous ammunition dumps under full control.) Lebed suggested that Moscow’s policies have brought the region to a “boil” and said this development could force a new military intervention there. He confirmed that he would enter politics and said he was a “centrist” opposed to radicalism of the left or the right.

Duma Votes Against Reorganization, Withdrawal of 14th Army.