Russia’s Growing Question Mark

The summit meeting scheduled for March between President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin looks increasingly iffy. This week Yeltsin was forced to cancel a visit to The Hague because of continuing poor health following heart bypass surgery last November and a subsequent bout of double pneumonia. The Kremlin says he still plans to meet next Sunday with French President Jacques Chirac. But the Russians have asked that no reporters accompany Chirac, a further clue that Yeltsin’s condition is not something his aides want to see broadcast to the world.

And so the shadow of political uncertainty hovering over Russia grows darker. It has been more than six months since Yeltsin has been able to carry on more or less normally in his official capacity. In his absence Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin has managed the day-to-day affairs of government, but decisions and actions on key matters affecting Russia’s external relations have to a great extent been deferred. That’s one reason why Clinton, at his press conference this week, described the U.S.-Russia agenda as huge and full.

Seeking a formal accommodation between Moscow and a NATO set for early expansion is a top item on that agenda. So is getting on with the mutual cutbacks in nuclear arsenals called for in the START II treaty, as well as a number of complex issues involving economic reform in Russia. Foreign policy figured almost not at all in last November’s U.S. presidential election. But Yeltsin’s health and the far-reaching questions it raises are a somber reminder that the most familiar foreign policy problem of all, relations with Moscow, may soon again be commanding priority attention.