PRESIDENT Yeltsin's appointment of Gen Alexander Lebed, as well as his sacking of the unpopular Defence Minister, Gen Pavel Grachev, will undoubtedly help him win the second round of the presidential election. However, it could also lead to turbulence in Russia's security establishment.
Mr Yeltsin acted quickly yesterday morning to draft Gen Lebed (46), a tough-talking army reserve officer, as head of the country's security council and national security adviser.
Gen Lebed acted quickly, too, by holding a press conference in Moscow to announce that Gen Grachev and his supporters had attempted to form a "GKChP", the acronym used to describe the junta which tried to seize power from President Gorbachev in August 1991.
He would, he said, swiftly dismiss pro Grachev officers from their posts, but stressed that there the vast majority of soldiers were now loyal to the president.
The dismissal of Gen Grachev was an indication of how seriously Mr Yeltsin regarded the threat to his position from the communist candidate Mr Gennady Zyuganov. Having come to the President's aid in the coup of August 1991 and again during the shelling of the parliament in 1993, Gen Grachev appeared to be immune to disciplinary action despite his obvious shortcomings.
One of his nicknames was "Vanka Stanka", the Russian name for the type of weighted doll which, when knocked down always stands up again. Russian democrats pressed for his dismissal on numerous occasions but Mr Yeltsin always stood by his man.
Gen Grachev was also known as "Pasha Mercedes" because of his liking for luxury cars. He was accused of serious corruption and complicity in the murder of journalist Dmitri Kholodov who was investigating skulduggery in the armed forces.
His ill advised intervention in Chechnya lowered the reputation of Russia's armed forces especially as he had claimed that one paratroop regiment could capture Grozny in two days. Even so, Mr Yeltsin went on record to describe him as "the best defence minister Russia ever had."
Gen Lebed's policy on Chechnya is that all Russian civilians should be evacuated, payments to the pro Moscow Chechen government stopped, and troops withdrawn north of the region's border. There would then be a referendum on independence, and if the answer was "yes" it would be followed by a Russian blockade.
He is against Mr Yeltsin's decree ending conscription but wants major reforms within the armed forces. He is also very strongly against the eastward expansion of Nato. On the economy, he believes in lower taxes to end the widespread bribery of tax officials, and on crime he favours a "knockout blow" against the Russian mafia.
But just because Gen Grachev is out of the way this does not mean that Gen Lebed will not have enemies within the Yeltsin camp, particularly if he plans to extend his fight against corruption into the higher reaches of political power.
. Observers from the OSCE strongly criticised Russian TV reporting of the election campaign, saying: "There was a significant bias in candidate Yeltsin's favour in news and comment programmes." Coverage of Mr Yeltsin was "positive", that of Mr Zyuganov "negative", and there was "hardly any coverage of the other candidates", giving the impression from an early stage of a two horse race. The OSCE delegation in Chechnya described elections in the region as "neither free nor fair".
