President Yeltsin's recent rise in the polls, becoming a credible challenger to the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov in June's presidential elections, is remarkable.

Western politicians would envy such a feat - and the campaign resources at Mr Yeltsin's disposal. But some of his methods are quite western. Promises have been made in a big way. Russian workers, many unpaid for months, are beginning to receive pay cheques. Mothers with sons fighting in Chechnya are being told the war will be over soon and, above all, the country is being warned that there is just once choice to be made democracy under Mr Yeltsin or a return to the old ways under Mr Zyuganov.

This is the key point of the Yeltsin campaign. It went into action first against the splintered democratic movements, which represent those who back neither Mr Yeltsin nor Mr Zyuganov, and are supported by a large cross section of the electorate. Their leading candidate, the economist Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, was targeted.

The rumour spread that Mr Yavlinsky had withdrawn his candidature in favour of Mr Yeltsin and he got precious little time on TV to deny it. His ratings plummeted, partially due to his arrogant image and because he could not team up, with other democrats to build a "third force".

That having been done, the campaign switched to the media, particularly to television. In a country so large that personal campaigning can merely skim the surface, television is the main way to get the message across to the people.

Mr Tim Bell, a former media adviser to Baroness Thatcher, was called in. His main contribution was to get Mr Yeltsin's wife Naina into the campaign. With TV under the control of Mr Yeltsin's supporters, she was given her own documentary in which the President was shown as the good Russian husband who makes his own "pelmeni" (Russian dumplings) and does odd jobs about the house.

As for the newspapers, the following excerpt from a report from the ITAR-TASS news agency, whose items are used throughout the country, gives an example of what the opposition is up against.

"It is hardly possible to report with full accuracy the innumerable dialogues, exchanges of witty, frank and free remarks between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and inhabitants of the Belgorod region where he spent two days.

"Wherever the President went, hundreds and even thousands of people were there to greet him and, the situation allowing, pester him with questions, stories and quips.

"What is most difficult to convey in writing is the tone of those exchanges, lively, full of humour and mutual confidence..."

THE tone bears a striking resemblance to the coverage of tours by Moscow's big wigs in the old days when elections produced a 99.99 per cent turn out, from which 99.99 per cent voted for the Communist candidate.

But the press, chronically strapped for cash and relying on state support in many cases, does not count for much these days outside Moscow and St Petersburg, cities which, for all their vast size, account for only 10 per cent of Russia's 150 million inhabitants.

Television is the big factor. It reaches over 98 per cent of Russian homes with a mixture of game shows, B movies from America with voice over in Russian, excruciatingly long advertising breaks and, finally, for the viewer interested in, the elections, the main evening news.

When Mr Yeltsin announced his peace plan for Chechnya, timed to synchronise with the start of his election campaign, he took the unprecedented step of inviting three leading anchors from the main national TV networks to ask questions at the end of his address to the nation.

Irina Sharapova of the state controlled Russian Public Television (ORT), Nikolai Svanidze of the state controlled Russian Television (RTR) and Yevgeny Kiselyov of the independent channel NTV had the President all to themselves.

In her questions, Ms Sharapova continuously referred to the war against the Chechen bandits. Mr Svanidze, who happens to double as a member of Mr Yeltsin's advisory council, asked timidly if the war could have been avoided in the first place. The President thundered that of course it could not.

Mr Kiselyov, noted as the toughest interviewer on the Russian airwaves, was uncharacteristically tame. Did the President think, he asked in a long rambling question, that Russia should say a firm "No" to terrorism but bear in mind that a political settlement was more advisable than a military one?

Not surprisingly, since launching a peace initiative which would include talks with the rebels, Mr Yeltsin replied simply: "I agree."

Kiselyov's docility on this occasion may, or may not, have had something to do with the fact that, his boss, Mr Igor Malashenko the NTV president, also serves as a media adviser to the campaign to re elect Mr Yeltsin.

More probably the country's most popular TV anchor believes, like most Russians, that Mr Yeltsin is now the only alternative to a return to communism under Mr Zyuganov, who at the time of the broad cast held a 10 point lead over Mr Yeltsin in the opinion polls.

NTV had backed the liberal reformer, Grigory Yavlinsky, but has switched its allegiance to the President. Mr Andrei Piontowsky of Moscow's Centre for Strategic Studies put it this way: "Behind NTV are bankers and rich people. They fear Zyuganov more than anything else. They are even ready to forgive Yeltsin for the war in Chechnya."

As for the state controlled TV channels, the pro Yeltsin bias continues. A week to the day after the peace announcement the war was back in full swing. Vremya, the main evening news on ORT, announced its three main headlines. The main item was Mr Yeltsin's meeting with his supporters in which he declared that he had sent a telegram to the Chechen rebel leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, that all, military operations had ended.

The second item concerned the work being done at Mr Yeltsin's behest by the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, in implementing the peace plan and the third headline dealt with the political situation in South Korea.

The coverage of Mr Yeltsin's policies lasted seven minutes and 15 seconds, according to my watch. Later there was 60 seconds of coverage of an anti war rally in Moscow's Pushkin Square. Three presidential candidates Mr Yavlinsky, Mrs Gorbachev and Gen Alexander Lebed, attended. Each candidates appeared on screen for approximately five seconds.

As for the poll topper, Mr Zyuganov of the Communist Party, well he just didn't appear to have done anything newsworthy on that particular day.