PRESIDENT Yeltsin's one time friend and current enemy, Gen Alexander Lebed, has claimed that "in two months at the most it will become obvious to absolutely everyone that Mr Yeltsin is physically incapable of ruling Russia.
At the weekend however President Chirac of France announced that he was impressed by the rapidity of Mr Yeltsin's recovery from his latest illness and Russian TV managed not only to let the public see their leader but also let them hear him speak a few words of a prepared statement.
Yesterday the official news was that Mr Yeltsin had once again curtailed his public engagements in order to work on documents which he is due to present to parliament in a week's time.
Gen Lebed, in an interview with the weekly newspaper Novva Gazeta, insisted there would be a presidential election this year and his office issued a statement saying that an anti Lebed campaign was about to be launched in the Russian media, which are largely under Mr Yeltsin's control.
In the meantime Gen Lebed faces a more immediate task in getting his candidate, Gen Alexander Korzhakov, elected in an important by election in the industrial city of Tula on Sunday, and here the electors have faced a baffling campaign from an array of candidates ranging from the not so sublime to the absolutely ridiculous.
According to the opinion polls Gen Korzhakov, one of the most unpopular men in Russia, is the front runner ahead of the FIDE world chess champion, Mr Anatoly Karpov, who represents the "patriotic forces", a pseudonym for the communist nationalist alliance. Also in contention is Ms Yelena Mavrodi, wife of one of Russia's most successful conmen and the founder of the most brilliantly conceived pyramid fraud the country has ever seen.
Gen Korzhakov was once the head of Mr Yeltsin's security guards and was rumoured to have enormous influence over the Russian leader. His close relationship with the President did not save his head when a scapegoat was needed in order to boost Mr Yeltsin's re election chances.
Previously renowned for being the most shadowy former KGB man in the Kremlin, Gen Korzhakov is now a wealthy man, and the subject of his wealth and Ms Mavrodi's has dominated the campaign so far.
Gen Korzhakov has been quite basically Russian in his attempts to woo the electorate with free vodka, while Ms Mavrodi has come up with a pyramid scheme of her own which, it is claimed, will bring in five million roubles (£555) to everyone who votes for her, but only if she wins.
As far as the political content of the campaign is concerned, it centres on Rosvooruzheniye, the big state arms producer which has a number of factories in the city. Mr Karpov says he wants to rid the arms industry of a "vicious system of middlemen" by Which, to be blunt, he means Gen Korzhakov - and his friends, one of whom, Gen Lebed, has still managed to retain his image as the "Mr Clean" of Russian politics.
