RODIONOV BRINGS IN SOME OF HIS OWN MEN.

President Boris Yeltsin — undoubtedly at the urging of Defense Minister Igor Rodionov — has finally started to make some personnel changes in top Defense Ministry and General Staff posts. In an October 2 decree he named Lt. Gen. Grigory Kasperovich — the chief of staff of the Urals Military District–to head the Defense Ministry’s personnel directorate. This post had not been vacant, but it was a foregone conclusion that Col. Gen. Evgeny Vysotsky, personnel czar for disgraced former defense minister Pavel Grachev, was on the way out. Kasperovich had commanded a division in Rodionov’s 40th Army in Afghanistan.

In other changes, Maj. Gen. Georgy Oleynik was named to fill the long-vacant post of head of the ministry’s budget and financing directorate. Maj. Gen. Gennady Zolotukhin will take charge of administrative affairs and head the armed forces legal service, while Lt. Gen. Leonid Ivashov becomes the new head of the main directorate for international military cooperation. Lt. Gen. Nikolay Pishchayev, who had headed the Strategy Department of the General Staff Academy while Rodionov was the Commandant, was named first deputy head of the General Staff. This is probably a case of Rodionov wanting to have someone he can trust in the top echelons of the General Staff until he can put his own man in the top position. Col. Gen. Mikhail Klishin was named to head the main organizational-mobilization directorate of the General Staff, a position he had been filling on a temporary basis. Other important posts remain vacant. They include the chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff and the Defense Ministry’s Main Educational Work Directorate. (Interfax October 2,1996, Kommersant-daily, October 3, 1996)

Latvian-Russian Border Talks Also Deadlocked.