PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin yesterday sacked his defence minister, Gen Igor Rodionov, and his deputy, in a sudden purge of the military top brass designed to reinforce his control over an underpaid, disaffected and near mutinous army.
Mr Yeltsin theatrically turned on Gen Rodionov (60), a career general with a reputation for honesty and plain speaking, blaming him for the stalled military reform and accusing of him of presiding over an army whose generals built themselves oversized dachas while their soldiers had nothing to eat.
"Soldiers grow thinner and generals get fatter," Mr Yeltsin said before the television cameras. "Generals have built dachas all over Russia. I wonder where this fashion came from! Generals are not interested in reorganising the army because they may lose their privileges. They are the main obstacle to implementing army reforms.
Shortly after the outburst, Gen Rodionov and the Chief of General Staff, Gen Viktor Samsonov, were dismissed. Gen Igor Sergeyev, the commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, was named as acting defence minister, while Col General Viktor Chechevatov, head of the Far East Military District, was strongly rumoured to become the army's new chief of staff.
Gen Chechevatov had first come to Mr Yeltsin's attention for standing as a candidate in last year's presidential election, and then standing down in favour of the President. He recently had to defend himself from newspaper revelations that he had built an enormous dacha outside Moscow, rumoured to cost over $500,000, saying he had borrowed the money from a bank.