MOSCOW - One of the leaders of the abortive Moscow coup d'etat in 1991 has been elected governor of the Tula region south of the capital, writes Seamus Martin.
In local elections at the weekend candidates opposed to President Yeltsin won three out of four governorships. Mr Vasilly Starodubtsev, agriculture minister in the Soviet cabinet, took more than 60 per cent of the vote in a region in which agriculture and the military industrial complex are the major sources of income. The only progovernment candidate to be elected at the weekend was Mr Nikolai Shaklein.