PRESIDENT Yeltsin has issued a decree demoting his former confidant Gen Alexander Korzhakov to the status of private citizen.
Mr Korzhakov, as he will now be known, was Mr Yeltsin's closest friend and ally for most of his years in the Kremlin. They played tennis together, Mr Korzhakov allegedly allowing Mr Yeltsin to win every time, and were inseparable partners at weekends in country retreats.
In recent weeks Mr Korzhakov, a former KGB officer, became an ally of the sacked security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, and has incurred the wrath of a president whose tolerance of rivalry is minimal and whose reaction to perceived disloyalty is vindictive in the extreme.
Sacked just before the presidential election this summer. Mr Korzhakov had worked closely with Mr Yeltsin for 11 years and eventually became head of the presidential bodyguard, a force which numbers in the tens of thousands. He still lives in the same luxury apartment block as Mr Yeltsin in western Moscow.
While yesterday's decree deprived Mr Korzhakov not only of his title as a KGB general but also of his salary, Mr Korzhakov is understood to have amassed a great deal of wealth in the transition to the market economy.
Mr Korzhakov, with the support of Gen Lebed, is standing in a by election for the State Duma in the city of Tula south of Moscow and is expected to win. Mr Korzhakov's money and Gen Lebed's popularity could make a powerful combination should an early presidential election take place due to Mr Yeltsin's ill health.
The former Soviet president, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, intimated in a British TV interview yesterday that he might form a coalition with Gen Lebed. This is regarded as most unlikely as an association with Mr Gorbachev guarantees unpopularity with the Russian electorate.
Mr Gorbachev also urged Mr Yeltsin to stand down now he was too ill to offer the dynamic leadership necessary, he said.
In another surprising development, Mr Gorbachev warned that the expansion of NATO could lead to a resumption of the Cold War. He said in an interview with LWT's Jonathan Dimbleby programme: "I am resolutely against the expansion of NATO I think it will be a big political miscalculation with great consequences.
But it is Mr Gorbachev's comments on Gen Lebed that are likely to attract most attention. He said a coalition between a democratic alliance and Gen Lebed was possible: "My attitude towards him was and still is mainly positive."
