Russia's State Duma is, as things currently stand, just three votes short of initiating impeachment procedures against President Boris Yeltsin, according to research by the Izvestia newspaper. The man who appears most likely to lose his job, however, is not Mr Yeltsin but his Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov.
Canvassing of independent deputies continues as the three-day debate begins today. The pro-Western Yabloko party of Mr Grigory Yavlinsky has joined Communist and nationalist deputies in supporting the motion to remove Mr Yeltsin from office.
Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home is Russia group, the Democratic Russia's Choice party of Mr Yegor Gaidar and Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultra-right-wing Liberal Democrats will probably vote to keep Mr Yeltsin in power.
In the meantime, Moscow political circles are alive with reports that Mr Yeltsin will sack Mr Primakov as a reprisal against the impeachment procedure. The Prime Minister has not supported the moves to oust Mr Yeltsin. His main crime is that he has become quite popular with the public. Becoming more popular than the President is something that Mr Yeltsin does not tolerate.
Mr Yeltsin has already moved to put one of his loyalists, Mr Sergei Stepashin, into the cabinet as Mr Primakov's first deputy. As Interior Minister, Mr Stepashin controls more than a million police and several hundred thousand troops. Human rights campaigners have strongly criticised Mr Stepashin for his role in the Chechen war.
The article of impeachment that condemns Mr Yeltsin for starting the war in Chechnya is, coincidentally, the one most likely to succeed. Mr Yavlinsky and his 45 deputies have joined the opposition on this article alone. They will vote against the other four.
The Duma has also accused Mr Yeltsin of: disbanding the Soviet Union; shelling the parliament in 1993; "genocide" of the Russian people through his economic policies; and the "destruction of the armed forces". In the absence of Yabloko's 45 votes these four articles will fall.
Should the article on Chechnya muster the votes of two-thirds of the 450 deputies the case would then go the supreme and constitutional courts. These would then decide if starting the war was an impeachable offence. As the President has a role in appointing judges it seems unlikely that the matter would go any further.