President Yeltsin's unhealthy appearance at the funeral of King Hussein and his spokesman's concession that further presidential power had been ceded to parliament have served to underline the belief that the Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, is now the effective ruler of Russia.
A former head of the KGB, Mr Primakov has described Ireland as his favourite Western country and on his last visit here as foreign minister was seen in fairly raucous company at a traditional music session at Johnny Fox's pub in Glencullen, in the Dublin mountains.
If Mr Primakov has a soft spot for the Irish there is little doubt about who his favourite and least favourite Russians are. The favourites are his old colleagues from the Lubyanka. In recent weeks he has appointed 10 former KGB operatives to important posts in government and state agencies.
One of these, Gen Yuri Kobaladze, who has been given the key post in Russia's ITARTASS news agency, has his own Irish links. His cover as a KGB agent in London was as correspondent there for Radio Moscow and on his return to Moscow he re-emerged as chief spokesman for the SVR, Russia's renamed foreign intelligence service.
A tall blond Georgian, Mr Kobaladze is known to his colleagues as "Koba", a nom-de- guerre once adopted by Stalin. Over lunch in Moscow's Pescatore 90 restaurant in Prospekt Mira, in the summer of 1994, Mr Kobaladze admitted to this correspondent that during his time as a spy in London he made a number of visits to Ireland, travelling inconspicuously by ferry from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire.
Another KGB general, Mr Nikolai Bordyuzha, holds the two most important posts in the Yeltsin administration as the president's chief-of-staff and as head of the Russian Security Council, an extra-constitutional body founded by Mr Yeltsin to replace the old Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party.
While KGB officers are currently the flavour of the month, businessmen with shady backgrounds are most definitely out. Mr Primakov has made the astonishing promise that he is prepared to release 94,000 low-level criminals from prison in order to make room for those guilty of white-collar economic crime and political corruption.
In the deal last weekend in which Mr Yeltsin relinquished the power to sack Mr Primakov it has been reported that as a quid pro quo the President and a number of his associates will be granted immunity against prosecution on corruption charges.
The same cannot be said for Mr Boris Berezovsky, the multi-millionaire businessman who was once close to the Yeltsin family, notably to his daughter, Ms Tatyana Dyachenko, and is known as the Rasputin of today's Kremlin. Through his media interests, which include newspapers and television stations, he helped Mr Yeltsin to get re-elected in 1996 but since Mr Primakov's accession to power his star has been very much on the wane.
Accused of having had one of his companies tap the President's personal telephone line as well as those of Mr Yeltsin's family and of senior officials, Mr Berezovsky went on the counterattack. Mr Primakov's statement that he would fill the jails with corrupt businessmen was, he said, reminiscent of the tyranny that existed in Stalin's time.
Mr Primakov's response was swift. Teams of security agents raided the offices of Mr Berezovsky's oil company, Sibneft, ostensibly in search of evidence of the presidential phone-tapping.
In the middle of last week Aeroflot, in which Mr Berezovsky is reported to have a major stake, became the target of the security agents, and raids have continued on companies with which Aeroflot has joint ventures. Two of Mr Berezovsky's associates on the Aeroflot board were sacked last week, and these sackings were followed by the dismissal of 10 of the airline's leading executives, including five vice-presidents.
The investigators claimed they were checking on information that large amounts of Aeroflot revenue had been diverted to a company named Andava, controlled by Mr Berezovsky and based in Switzerland.
Another major victim of one of the biggest purges seen in Moscow since communist times was the former justice minister, Mr Valentin Kovalyov, who has been arrested on corruption charges and seems destined to fill one of the newly freed bunks in Russia's prisons.
Mr Abel Aganbegyan, a former aide to President Mikhail Gorbachev, has also been accused of corrupt practices. The list is likely to get longer.
The Prime Minister's highly popular moves against corruption have been seen by many observers as the beginning of his campaign for next year's presidential elections.
There are, however, a few hurdles which Mr Primakov could face. First, the full details of the deal in which Mr Yeltsin cannot dismiss the Prime Minister without parliament's approval have not yet emerged. The fact that the known details appear to clash with the country's constitution could allow Mr Yeltsin to turn the tables on Mr Primakov at a later stage.
Second, with a further downturn in Russia's economy expected in spring, Mr Primakov's popularity could be seriously eroded before Russians go to the polls to elect a new president.