The latest opinion poll published in Moscow shows the acting president, Mr Vladimir Putin, may have to face a run-off in Russia's presidential election. He needs more than 50 per cent to win outright on Sunday but yesterday's poll showed him on 48.8 per cent as he toured the country on "government business", still denying that he was conducting an electoral campaign.
The poll, organised by the Agency for Regional Political Studies, questioned 1,600 people in 49 urban and rural Russian regions on March 12th and claims to have a margin of error of 2.5 per cent.
Since the poll was taken it has been generally accepted that Mr Putin's popularity has been slipping as casualty figures from the war in Chechnya begin to bite.
Nation-wide TV coverage of the funerals of soldiers in cities such as Sergiev Posad, 70 km north of Moscow, where more than a dozen local military were killed, and in the north-western city of Pskov, where 110 local soldiers lost their lives in a week, have brought home to many people that the cost of victory in Chechnya could be high.
Should Mr Putin be forced into a run-off, his aura of invincibility would begin to wear thin. However, it is extremely unlikely that anyone else will make it to the Kremlin.
It appears that suggestions of slippage are being taken seriously. Yesterday, the emergencies minister, Mr Sergei Shoigu, in a statement on the election campaign, told a news conference: "A second round would not be welcome. Everybody is tired. Furthermore, it would imply more spending."
Yesterday's poll puts the Communist leader Mr Gennady Zyuganov at 28 per cent, with the liberal politician Mr Grigory Yavlinsky just short of 9 per cent, almost double his previous best figure. As head of the Yabloko party, Mr Yavlinsky is the only candidate to have spoken out against the conflict and the increase in his vote may indicate the beginning of disaffection with the war among the Russian intelligentsia.
Those who intend to put their mark in the box marked protiv vsekh (against all), 4.6 per cent, constitute the fourth largest bloc, ahead of supporters of Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky on 3.8 per cent.
In the meantime, Mr Putin continued his non-campaign in the cities of Kazan and Naberezhny Chelny, which until the end of communism was named Brezhnev.
TV pictures of him embracing local mullahs as part of his official government business will do him no harm when the ballot boxes open next Sunday in this predominantly Muslim are of Russia.
AFP reports from Kiev:
President Leonid Kuchma has signed a law abolishing the death penalty in Ukraine in line with Council of Europe requirements, his office announced yesterday. The measure made life imprisonment the maximum sentence in Ukraine.
Relations between the former Soviet republic and the 41-nation Council of Europe had long been strained by conflict over Ukraine's position as one of the few European countries to retain the death penalty.
