FACING open heart surgery in a month's time, President Yeltsin looked stiff and wan as he went on Russian television yesterday to announce that the brightest star of his administration had been extinguished.
In sacking his security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, Mr Yeltsin has taken the risk of a renewal of hostilities in Chechnya, where Gen Lebed successfully brought a disastrous 18 month war to an end.
He may also have created a political enemy far more powerful in his appeal to the Russian public than was Mr Gennady Zyuganov, his communist rival in the presidential elections of this summer.
The most recent opinion polls in Russia showed that Gen Lebed had won the trust of 40 per cent of the population, far outstripping Mr Yeltsin's own popularity ratings. Mr Yeltsin's tolerance of rivals is minimal and the abrupt end of Gen Lebed's career in the Kremlin was not entirely unexpected.
Gen Lebed, a burly southern Russian with a bass voice which sounds like a clap of thunder, was drafted into the Yeltsin camp for reasons of political expediency between the first and second rounds of Russia's presidential election. Mr Yeltsin had gained a wafer thin lead over Mr Zyuganov in round one and needed a major boost in order to stay in power.
His political coup de main was to win over Gen Lebed, who had finished third in the first round, to his side. In doing this the Yeltsin camp knew it was taking a major risk.
GENERAL Lebed's main appeal to the electorate had been a frankness, even a bluntness, unsuited to the labyrinthine power struggles which had developed behind the scenes in Mr Yeltsin's administration.
Although unknown to the public, due to massive control of the media, Mr Yeltsin entered the second round of the election incapacitated by his third heart attack in a year. The public was told he had a "sore throat".
Men whose power and influence depended on Mr Yeltsin's continuance in office were faced with a cuckoo in the nest at a time when the President's diminished physical capacity permitted greater freedom of action by, and greater power for, his subordinates.
Fed by his success in ending the war in Chechnya, the cuckoo grew bigger and bigger and sang louder and louder. The war had continued, according to Gen Lebed, because certain politicians wanted it to continue. There was, he hinted, money to be made. He went as far to name the Interior Minister, Gen Anatoly Kulikov, as the main offender and called for his dismissal.
In doing so, Gen Lebed created a new enemy to add to a growing list which already included the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, and the Kremlin Chief of Staff, Mr Anatoly Chubais, who felt their grip on power loosening as Gen Lebed's popularity grew.
But perhaps it was his choice of friends more than his creation of enemies which finally prompted Mr Yeltsin to take such precipitate action. In his televised address the President, tensing every muscle in an effort to concentrate on his script, accused his former security chief of causing a rift in the Kremlin and holding ambitions for the presidency. But his most venomous tones were kept for the throwaway line: "He has found himself a new friend. You understand?"
The new friend in question is the former KGB general, Alexander Korzhnkov, a shadowy individual who was once Mr Yeltsin's closest Kremlin associate until he was sacked in the very week that Gen Lebed was drafted into the administration.
A formidable alliance was formed with Gen Lebed providing the political popularity and Gen Korzhakov the hard cash from his network of business sources. Quickly, Gen Kulikov denounced Gen Korzhakov as a racketeer, something he failed to mention when Gen Korzhakov was in Mr Yeltsin's good books.
In reply, Gen Korzhakov said he had once been asked by a pro Yeltsin banker to "eliminate" a competitor but had refused. The next allegation, from Gen Kulikov, was that Gen Lebed had been forming a 50,000 strong Russian Legion to take power by military means.
The Prime Minister, Mr Chernomyrdin, denied that a coup was planned but said that other unspecified allegations against Gen Lebed were true. This was followed in a matter of hours by Mr Yeltsin's sacking of Gen Lebed, a move which could endanger the stability of Russia even further.
THE main danger is a resumption of hostilities in Chechnya where, by Gen Lebed's account, more than 80,000 civilians have been killed in the 20 month conflict. The Kremlin hawks have portrayed Gen Lebed's peace treaty there as a "surrender": "Gen Kulikov, whose interior ministry - troops pursued the war with vigour, is believed to want another crack at the Chechens.
The head of the rebel Chechen army, Mr Aslan Maskhadov, who trusts no Russian politician but Gen Lebed, is a political moderate but a military commander of unchallenged prowess.
In the meantime Mr Yeltsin is preparing for an operation which is undoubtedly serious. The only ingredient missing from this Russian melodrama so far has been the arrival on the scene of the grim reaper. The odds are still very much in favour of Mr Yeltsin's recovery but this will take several months. There is time for further power struggles and for further intrigues.
Gen Lebed may have been sacked because he "knew too much". He may now make that knowledge available to the Russian public, if the hobbled media permit it, and some of it may be unsavoury in the extreme.
Gen Korzhakov, with Gen Lebed's support, stands in a by election for the Duma in Tula, the country's main arms producing city. The odds are in Gen Korzhakov's favour in that particular case but Gen Lebed may have to wait until the year 2000 before he can put himself before the Russian electorate once more.
