THE Icon of the Holy Virgin of Kazan, credited with Ivan the Terrible's crushing of the power of the Tatars in 1552, has been called to the aid of modern medicine for President Yeltsin's heart operation.
Paradoxically, Prof Renat Akchurin, the surgeon who wills perform the operation, happens to be a Tatar.
His Holiness Patriarch Alexi of Moscow and All The Russias yesterday invoked the icon, which is also credited with the ousting of the Poles from Moscow in 1612, Napoleon's defeat in 1812 and the lifting of the siege of Leningrad during the second World War.
As doctors declared Mr Yeltsin to be in "optimal condition" for surgery, the Patriarch celebrated the feast of the icon by praying for the President.
On the material side of things, a team of doctors, including the pioneering US heart surgeon, Mr Michael de Bakey, met in Moscow yesterday afternoon. But a presidential spokesman, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, who made the announcement about the doctors, did not say when the operation would take place.
Mr Yeltsin is understood to need at least a triple and more probably a quadruple by pass operation in order to return to good health, after having suffered three heart attacks in 15 months. The operation is expected to take up to eight hours.
