WHILE President Yeltsin was on the hustings in the southern of Belgorod yesterday there was a flurry of police activity 400 kilo metres away in Moscow. Reps that a sniper fired shots near luxurious apartment block in west of the city where Mr Yeltsin's private residence is situated gave rise to suspicions of an assassination attempt.
Senior security officials quickly issued statements saying there was nothing to worry about the shots were aimed at the house next door.
Meanwhile, in Belgorod, not far from the border with Ukraine, Mr Yeltsin was firing his first broadside of the election campaign following his formal registration as a candidate yesterday.
The visit, extensively covered on all channels of Russian television, included a walkabout in which Mr Yeltsin promised increased pensions for veterans of the second World War, who are among the most under privileged citizens in the new Russia.
In an interview with the newspaper Rossiiskiye Vesti, the official presidential daily, published yesterday, Mr Yeltsin launched a vigorous attack on the Chechen rebel leader, Gen Dzhokhar Dudayev.
"Terrorists like Dudayev don the robes of freedom fighters when in fact it is more appropriate to compare Dudayevism with notorious criminal groups such as the Medellin Cartel in Colombia or the golden triangle in south east Asia. The Chechen people more than anyone else has suffered from Dudayevism," he said.
Mr Yeltsin's popularity has been boosted by the payment of long overdue salaries to workers in state organisations, by his peace plan for Chechnya, and by the institution of closer ties between Russia and Belarus.
An indication of what might happen in the event of a full integration of the two countries was given yesterday by the Belarus president, Mr Alexander Lukashenko, and it was far from the democratic expectations contained in the convention on integration announced on April 2nd.
He threatened to expel diplomats who attended anti-integration rallies in Minsk. He also said he would withdraw accreditation, from foreign journalists who covered the demonstrations.
Mr Yeltsin's popularity rating has risen to 21 per cent in the most recent poll published by VTsIOM, the All Russian Centre for Public Opinion, putting him just six percentage points behind the Communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, with the democratic candidate, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, and the nationalist, Gen Alexander Lebed, on 10 per cent and the ultra nationalist, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, on nine.
Mr Yavlinsky has now been backed by leading liberals including Ms Yelena Bonner, widow of the dissident Andrei Sakharov, and the anti war campaigner, Mr Sergei Kovalyob, but in today's Russia support from the marginalised liberals counts for little.
Of greater significance was the endorsement yesterday of Mr Zyuganov by Mr Sergei Baburin, head of the right wing Russian National Union. Mr Baburin, who is deputy chairman of the lower house of the Russian parliament, issued a statement to his not inconsiderable band of supporters calling on them to "give support to the Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, as the only candidate of the national patriotic forces."
