Gen Alexander Lebed has deprived President Yeltsin of a double success by forcing a run-off in the elections for governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk. A defeat for Gen Lebed would have been ended his political career and given Mr Yeltsin a great deal of pleasure.
But the resilient former Kremlin security chief made a nonsense of opinion polls which predicted he would be defeated and managed to get 45.1 per cent of the vote against 35.4 for the incumbent governor, Mr Valery Zubov. The communist candidate, Mr Pyotr Romanov, finished with 13 per cent with a number of other candidates polling less than 1 per cent each.
A run-off between Gen Lebed and Mr Zubov will take place on May 17th, with Gen Lebed now installed as a firm favourite.
Openly admitting that he was using the Krasnoyarsk poll as a stepping stone to the presidency of Russia, Gen Lebed faced down opposition not only from Mr Zubov but also from Moscow's powerful mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov.
Mayor Luzhkov has yet to announce his candidature for the presidency but it is well known that he has his eyes on the country's top job. He travelled to Krasnoyarsk ostensibly to support Mr Zubov, but in fact was attempting to end Gen Lebed's presidential hopes.
The campaign included a visit from the French movie star, Alain Delon, who believes Gen Lebed can do for Russia what De Gaulle did for France. Mr Luzhkov brought popular Russian vocalist, Iosif Kobzon, who is believed to have underworld connections, with him to support Mr Zubov.
Mr Luzhkov is by far the most popular politician in Moscow but the Krasnoyarsk vote has confirmed suspicions that provincial Russians do not regard him highly. Gen Lebed's success will undoubtedly put a large dent in Mr Luzhkov's presidential hopes.
The campaign itself was unusual in that Gen Lebed on the one hand introduced a western backer in the form of Alain Delon, but on the other resorted to some old-style Soviet tactics. The most sinister of these was an appeal to people to ring a confidential telephone number if they felt their neighbours had begun, without an obvious explanation, to adopt a prosperous lifestyle.
Back in Moscow the cabinet of the new Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, is expected to be announced in the next couple of days. The speaker of the Duma, Mr Gennady Seleznyov, a communist, hinted yesterday that it could be a multi-party team. The right-wing extremist, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said he expected three cabinet seats for his Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). On Sunday, Mr Yeltsin set a message of praise to LDPR's congress in Moscow after the party had supported Mr Kiriyenko in the Duma vote.
