“I understand, Valentin,” the First Lady said reassuringly. “No offense taken.”
“Thank you. You know what he is about, Mr. President, ma’am. He appeals to those in my country who want the old ways, to bring back the strong central government, to weaken the military, to protect Russians living overseas. Instead of embracing the West and the emerging third world, he shuns it. Instead of trying to strengthen the Commonwealth by strengthening the Republics under a free market society, he tries to strengthen Moscow and bully the independent Republics into allowing Russians to keep all the property and privileges they controlled under the old oppressive regime. It cannot be done. It must ultimately fail.”
The First Couple nodded in complete understanding. Shortly after the President had taken office, one of the first crises he’d had to face was the continuing loss of influence and power by Boris Yeltsin, a man the President — and most of the Western World — had hoped could keep the newly formed Russian Republic moving toward democratic reforms. During his first state of the union address, the President had called upon more aid for Russia to help Yeltsin implement his social and economic reforms. But the country, facing an enormous deficit, high unemployment, and a sluggish economy, informed him through their Congressional representatives and Senators that it was time to care for America’s own first. The President, at the urging of the First Lady, the Secretary of State, and others, was undaunted. He continued to make speeches pressing for aid.
Then, in March of 1993, former President Richard Nixon came back from a trip to Russia — he still knew the country better than anyone in or out of office — and met privately with the President, reiterating the dire need for American aid. Nixon even wrote an editorial in The New York Times declaring disaster ahead if America didn’t get involved. And then, step by step, things began to unravel for Yeltsin. In an extraordinary four-day session, the Congress of People’s Deputies stripped Yeltsin of a lot of his powers, putting them back into the hands of his opposition.
The President, sensing the urgency of Yeltsin’s decline, called upon the major industrialized nations to pump up emergency aid for Yeltsin. His pleas fell on deaf ears. The Germans were struggling with the economic effects of reunification, the Japanese were still reeling from their own faltering economy, the French were typically more concerned about their own country than anyone else, and the British simply had no money.
Nixon, the southern Democratic president realized, had been right all along. Before the summer was over, Yeltsin was out, and Vitaly Timofeyevich Velichko was in.
Velichko was not only President of Russia, but President of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ (CIS) Council of the Heads of State; Chairman of the Socialist Motherland Party (which was formerly the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union); Commander in Chief of the Russian Armed Forces; as well as the Commander in Chief of the Joint Commonwealth Forces. He was the most powerful man in Russia, and he shared ultimate control over the nuclear weapons in the CIS states that still had them with his Minister of Defense and his Chief of the General Staff.
Under the Soviet government prior to 1992, Velichko was Deputy Defense Minister and the chairman commander of the Main Military Council, the principal group charged with maintaining wartime readiness in peacetime (the equivalent to the U.S. Strategic Command). In wartime the Main Military Council becomes the Stavka, the highest wartime military body, and the President takes direct control.
After the Soviet Union’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, Velichko’s primary job was the restoration of the image and fighting timbre of the Russian Army, and he did it with ruthless abandon. He blamed the failure in Afghanistan not on Russian troops, but soldiers from the outlying, more pro-Muslim republics. Velichko ordered imprisonment and executions for desertion, drunkenness, insubordination, and conduct unbecoming a Soviet soldier. In particular, non-Russian soldiers were policed, even persecuted. Soldiers with Muslim families or a Muslim heritage were removed from the Red Army.
Rather than alienate himself from the military, he actually endeared himself to them, especially hard-line Russians. Velichko was instrumental in continuing many strategic military programs despite huge budget deficits and soaring inflation — the SS-25 and SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Tupolev-160 strategic supersonic bomber, the Typhoon-class nuclear-powered submarine, and others.
It was Velichko’s job to align the Russian military with the pro-Communist plotters during the August 1991 coup attempt, and when the coup failed and Yeltsin came to power, Velichko faded into the background, remaining in his Black Sea dacha on the Crimean Peninsula of the Ukraine. His popularity with the military was so great that, even after the Ukraine’s independence in November of 1991, the Crimean Peninsula became a virtual Russian military enclave, with all naval and naval air bases there remaining in Russian hands. No one dared challenge Velichko and Russian ownership of those installations.
But in a stunning peaceful coup precipitated by threats from the military commanders, in the summer of 1993, Yeltsin was forced to give up his presidency in order to avoid a military takeover. The Congress of People’s Deputies, the unelected legislative body in Russia, announced Velichko president, pending elections in 1995. Velichko did not call for elections for members of the Congress, and so he solidified his hold on the government.
Quickly, tactics not seen since the days of the old Soviet Union started emerging. The KGB was refortified and renamed, beefed up with budgetary dollars meant for the people, persecution and disappearance of political enemies escalated, freedoms enjoyed since the fall of the USSR began to evaporate: free speech, the right to openly practice religion, and the right to travel between the CIS states were tightened. He also seized many of the industries that had, during Yeltsin’s rule, been taken into private ownership. Velichko ruled Russia with an iron fist reminiscent of Khrushchev, but unlike Khrushchev, many (including the U.S. President and the CIA) felt that Velichko was a psychiatrically defined sociopath. In other words, he was nuts, which made him all the more dangerous.
“You know,” the President was saying, “you’re gonna have to get your Congress together and tell him he’s gonna fail. Big-time. He’s going to drag your whole country into war with the United States or NATO, sure as hell.”
“It is hard to speak of calm and cooperation in the dead of winter,” Sen’kov said. “The truth is, many in my country like Velichko’s explosive rhetoric. There are many who blame the Ukrainians, the Muslims, the Romanians, the Baits, for Russia’s problems. In their minds, an invasion would solve everything.”
“So that transport was carrying an invasion force,” the First Lady said as if she knew it all along.
Sen’kov looked as if perhaps he was going to deny it; then: “I’m afraid so, ma’am. Reinforcements for the rebels in Kishinev, and SPETSNAZ commandos to stage cross-border raids against Romanian and Ukrainian air defense installations.”
“Velichko promised me that aircraft was full of humanitarian relief supplies,” the President said. “He said those men that died were relief workers and aircrewmen.”
“Quite the contrary, sir. It was a small but very lethal fighting force. Petition the Romanian government to examine the wreckage.”