Russian newspapers carried on 28 and 29 April reactions to a December 2000 report by the CIA\'s U.S. National Intelligence Council, which allegedly forecast that Russia could break up into six or eight separate countries by 2015. In a message posted on \"Johnson\'s Russia List\" on 2 May, George Kolt, a retired CIA official with responsibility from Russia, denied that the report made any such forecast and he alleged that the first report of such a prediction appeared in \"Nezavisimaya gazeta.\" Despite the lack of an actual forecast, Russian media managed to get a wealth of reaction to the prediction. In an interview with \"Izvestiya\" on 29 April, Dmitrii Orlov of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications said there have been and will continue to be such reports from the CIA, in part because the conservative part of the Republican Party is interested in seeing Russia as weak as possible. Orlov added that he does not agree with \"such alarmists,\" claiming that the head of the same department said on the site four years ago that Russia would disintegrate. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov on 28 April categorically rejected the possibility of the Russian Federation breaking up. He argued that \"a lot had been done over the last four years to strengthen vertical power\" and that Russian state has been \"strengthened.\" (RFE/RL)