Acting president Vladimir Putin came back to earth in Russia's third city, Nizhny Novgorod (the former closed city of Gorky). There were no aerobatics in a SU27 fighter jet yesterday as in Grozny the day before. The transport was the latest, smarter model of the tank-like Volga automobile which just happens to be made in Nizhny Novgorod.
There were further gestures to local voters with a strong statement emphasising that it was the military industrial complex which would put Russia's economy back on its feet. Defence enterprises, of which there are many in the city, would be reequipped. Young specialists would be attracted to the enterprises. And all this from a man who insists he is not campaigning.
To the workers of Nizhny Novgorod things never sounded brighter. To the rest of the Russian electorate television pictures of the Russian flag being raised over the Chechen town of Komsomolskoye heightened pride in what the acting president has been doing and, coincidentally perhaps, gained him more votes.
Another military incident received far less publicity. In the far east, near the port of Vladivostok, the bodies of five young sailors were found in a sealed comp artment in a disused submarine. To make a living they were stripping the decommissioned submarine of metal to sell to local scrap dealers. They were unable to reopen hatches through which they had entered the chamber and all five suffocated.
Unfortunately, this story is far closer to the everyday situation in Russia's armed forces than the hoisting of victorious flags in Chechnya. Mr Putin's election promises to support the military establishment will gain him votes in a country in which the military and those dependent upon it constitute a remarkably large part of the population.
Mr Putin's main opponent, the Communist leader Mr Gennady Zyuganov, will be in Nizhny Novgorod today. He appears to be making a habit of following the leader around Russia, making the same promises. This allows the ever-eager pro-Kremlin TV stations to show him up as a mediocre politician with little imagination.
For once the ORT and RTR channels are telling the truth. Mr Zyuganov wouldn't be seen dead in a SU27 fighter, even if he was allowed into one.
Whatever one might say about the madcap right-winger Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, there is little doubt he has a strong imagination. In what has been the dullest election campaign ever in Russia Mr Zhirinovsky has at least made things lively. The main plank in his campaign is that if he is elected he will abolish all further elections and stay in power in the Kremlin for life.
Yesterday he livened things up by announcing he would withdraw from the campaign in favour of Mr Zyuganov or the liberal economist Mr Grigory Yavlinsky if either of them offered him a cabinet post. It was an offer no one could accept but it made him the second most publicised candidate after the non-campaigning Mr Putin.
