Russia Gets Timely Boost in German Aid : Diplomacy: Kohl pledges token relief to embattled Yeltsin in return for quicker military pullout.

President Boris N. Yeltsin won token but timely support for his threatened economic reforms Wednesday as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised cash aid and debt relief in exchange for a swifter Russian military pullout from eastern Germany.

Kohl announced at the end of a two-day visit that Moscow’s 130,000 troops still on German soil will leave by Aug. 31, 1994, four months ahead of schedule; they also will turn over their army barracks free of charge. The Red Army had 340,000 troops protecting East Germany at the end of the Cold War when the Soviet empire collapsed and Germany reunited.

Kohl called the accord “an important step for the future of German-Russian relations” and agreed to grant $350 million to help Russia house the returning soldiers and their families. He also gave Russia an eight-year reprieve on interest payments due on $3.2 billion of its debt to Germany and promised to support Russia’s bid for broader relief from the Paris Club of creditor nations.

In separate pacts, Germany pledged to send technicians to help Russia destroy chemical and nuclear weapons and offered $640 million in compensation for Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians who survived Nazi concentration camps half a century ago. The two countries agreed to return works of art seized during World War II by Nazi troops in Russia and by Red Army troops in Germany.

Germany’s new assistance, from a government under fierce pressure at home to curb spending, is but a drop in the sea of $50 billion in aid, loans and credits Germany has poured into Russia since 1989. But Yeltsin, embroiled in his own domestic battles against anti-reform forces, was eager to make the most of it.

“Russians feel thankful for the political and economic support for reforms that Germany and Chancellor Kohl have given us,” an upbeat Yeltsin told reporters.

As Kohl flew back to Germany, Yeltsin headed to China for talks on aid and trade that also aim to improve his personal standing and appease former Communists at home who call his foreign policy too pro-Western.

Kohl arrived Monday for his first visit to post-Communist Russia just as the conservative Russian Congress of People’s Deputies forced Yeltsin to oust the leader of his Western-backed reform program, Acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar.

Sitting beside Kohl on Wednesday, Yeltsin thanked him for going ahead with the visit, even though German business leaders in the delegation had voiced doubts about the political uncertainties here.

“Behind a cloud of ashes from the collapsed building of communism, they should see a new building,” Yeltsin said. “Every major politician should understand clearly that despite a fierce fight, Russia is on its way to a market economy.

“It is only a limited group of hard-line politicians who are trying to pull Russia back,” he added. “But these efforts--and I declare this with full conviction--are futile.”

Yeltsin took his guest hunting near his country home outside Moscow and worked to build a personal rapport. They referred to each other at their joint press conference as “Boris” and “my friend Helmut.”

Kohl said he met Russia’s new prime minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, and stressed Germany’s support for “all forces in Russia that press for economic reform.”

The ascent of Chernomyrdin (pronounced Chair-no-MIR-din), a former Communist Party industrial bureaucrat who also ran the oil and gas industry for Yeltsin, had been widely expected to slow or reverse Gaidar’s efforts to sell off state industries and cut subsidies to the military-industrial complex.

But at Gaidar’s urging, three key aides who helped him manage the reforms--Economics Minister Andrei Nechayev, Privatization Minister Anatoly Chubais and Foreign Trade Minister Pyotr Aven--said Wednesday that they will stay in the Cabinet until they’re fired.