The campaign for the presidency of Russia is on and it's all about keeping it in "the family". The sacking of the Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Stepashin, and his government may have grabbed the early headlines, but President Yeltsin's announcement that he wants Mr Vladimir Putin to succeed him is of far greater significance.

Mr Putin, a former KGB operative, was installed as acting Prime Minister yesterday, pending approval by the state Duma. If he is approved, and the Duma has yet to reject any of Mr Yeltsin's nominees, Mr Putin will have the opportunity to build a public profile in time to have a chance of victory when Russians vote for a new president next summer.

It had become clear that Mr Stepashin would not be able to win the presidency and, therefore, he had to go. His dismissal as prime minister was linked also to the formation last week of an extremely strong alliance between the Fatherland grouping of Moscow's Mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, and the All Russia movement of regional politicians.

Mr Luzhkov can deliver the Moscow vote while All Russia can go a long way towards securing support in the provinces. All that is needed to make the new group an unstoppable political force is the arrival in its ranks of the former prime minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, who, according to polls, is Russia's most popular politician.

Although he has not committed himself as yet, Mr Primakov has described the new group as "extremely positive".

In recent years, most particularly after his quintuple heart by-pass surgery in late 1996, Mr Yeltsin has gathered around him a political clique known as "the family". Among the leading members is an actual family member, Mr Yeltsin's daughter, Ms Tatyana Dyachenko.

Also associated are the businessman and media magnate, Mr Boris Berezovsky, who is known as Russia's latter-day Rasputin, and the former privatisation chief. Mr Anatoly Chubais, who has been accused of corruption by the Central Intelligence Agency in the US. Mr Putin is also a "family" member.

Although Mr Yeltsin is legally obliged to leave office when he completes his second term in July, "the family", many of whose members have become extremely and inexplicably rich, is keen to hold on to power to retain immunity against prosecution.

The safest way to do this until now has been to ensure that presidential elections have been confined to straight fights between Mr Yeltsin and his supporters on the one hand and the Communists and their supporters on the other. It has been the priority of most of Russia's voters simply to keep the Communists from returning to power, and until now the only electable alternative was Mr Yeltsin.

The formation of the new grouping has upset the apple cart. Now "the family" is faced for the first time with a non-Communist opposition of such political clout that it sees itself in danger of losing power.

It is also a measure of Mr Yeltsin's formation in the old Communist system that he has blamed Mr Stepashin for allowing an opposition of such strength to come into being. Mr Yeltsin's mind-set is that of a former politburo member and regional party boss. In the old days, as Mr Yeltsin found to his own cost, opposition was simply crushed.

Even with the advent of a measure of democracy in Russia Mr Yeltsin has managed in no small measure to follow the old tradition. His vice-president, Mr Alexander Rutskoy, and his choice as speaker of parliament, Mr Ruslan Khasbulatov, were crushed when the parliament was shelled in 1993.

Since then a series of prime ministers have been crushed with remarkable regularity. Mr Primakov, mooted as prime minister by the pro-Western politician, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, was not Mr Yeltsin's choice as head of government. He was crushed when he became popular, but it is more important to note that he lost his job at a time when he supported a criminal investigation into corruption in the Kremlin.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Putin will be able to keep power in "the family". Certainly if there were to be an election today he would stand little chance of winning. But Mr Berezovsky and other media magnates have been able to do remarkable things in the past.

At the start of campaigning for the presidential elections in 1996 Mr Yavlinsky was leading in the polls, but was virtually destroyed by TV. One station even reported that he had withdrawn his candidature.

The new oligarchy which had gained control of the media threw its weight behind Mr Yeltsin even to the extent of failing to report that he suffered a major heart attack in the last week of the campaign.

But there was a price to pay. Russian newspapers and TV stations are more likely to suffer losses than make profits. The real money lay in getting one's hands on certain state enterprises which were being privatised. When the privatisation auctions took place the media oligarchs reaped the harvest which they had sown by supporting Mr Yeltsin.

Mr Berezovsky, who owns the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta and the business daily Kommersant and has major TV interests, Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, of the Media-Most Group, and a former deputy premier Mr Vladimir Potanin, who controlled the national newspaper Izvestia, have become so wealthy as to make it into Forbes magazine's listings of the world's richest people.

Mr Gusinsky incurred the wrath of the Kremlin by supporting Mr Luzhkov after the financial crash last year. He is believed to be behind a series of billboards which appeared in Moscow in the past week warning against a mysterious enemy called "baoBAB". The last three letters in capitals, BAB, are the initials of Boris Avramovich Berezovsky.

In turn another poster campaign declared "Roma loves The Family." Neither series of posters appears to be aimed at the public. They are seen as sinister messages from one section of Russia's manipulative oligarchs to another. "Roma" is understood to be Roman Avramovich, a Siberian oil billionaire who is in the Yeltsin camp.

The new billionaires still wield immense power and should most of them line up behind Mr Putin then he could be elected. But Mr Luzhkov and his group are too strong to be brushed aside as Mr Yavlinsky was. If Mr Primakov finally agrees to join the new movement Mr Putin's chances could be reduced significantly.

It seems likely that attempts will be made to do a deal between "the family" and Mr Primakov in order to weaken the new grouping. The future of Russia could hinge on these moves.