Primakov enters presidency race

The former Russian prime minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, put himself and his party into the limelight in the campaign for tomorrow's parliamentary election by announcing that he would run for president against the Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, in June.

Speaking to students at Moscow State University, Mr Primakov said: "After much thought and after receiving thousands of letters and telegrams, I have decided, without further delay, to announce that I will take part in the presidential race."

Mr Primakov is joint leader of the Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) bloc with the Moscow mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, and both have been under constant fire from pro-Yeltsin TV channels during the parliamentary campaign.

Mr Sergei Dorenko, the main anchorman on the pro-government ORT channel, has gone as far as accusing Mr Primakov of having ordered the assassination of the Georgian President and former Soviet foreign minister, Mr Eduard Shevardnadze.

Mr Primakov (70) was, like most of his electoral opponents, a long-serving member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union before its dissolution in 1991. Like Mr Putin, he was also head of Russia's security services, being appointed director of the KGB by the former Soviet president, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev.

His links with Mr Gorbachev have been a major factor in the enmity felt towards him by President Yeltsin and members of "The Family", as Mr Yeltsin's entourage is known.

As foreign minister he pursued a strong anti-NATO line and pushed for the OSCE to be the main pillar of Europe's post-Cold War security architecture. He became prime minister in 1998 following the dismissal of the government of Mr Sergei Kiriyenko during Russia's economic meltdown in August of that year.

Proposed as prime minister by the pro-Western Yabloko party of the economic reformer Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, Mr Primakov gained broad support in the Duma, being opposed only by the ultra-nationalist Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Despite his misgivings, Mr Yeltsin had little option but to accept Mr Primakov as prime minister. He was seen as a major factor in bringing stability back to Russia's political and economic scene after the August crisis.

When Mr Primakov backed an investigation into Kremlin corruption by the prosecutor-general, Mr Yuri Skuratov, Mr Yeltsin replaced him with Mr Sergei Stepashin whose main attribute until then had been an insatiable appetite for doing what he was told.

Mr Primakov's move yesterday had the primary effect of placing OVR on all the main news bulletins. Secondly, it clearly put him into the leadership of the party in place of Mr Luzhkov who suffered much more severely from the barrage of hostility from the main national TV network.

In the last major opinion poll before tomorrow's vote, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) was in the lead on 19 per cent, followed by the pro-government Unity party led by the Emergencies Minister, Mr Sergei Shoigu, on 17.6 per cent. OVR polled just 9.2 per cent in a survey of 1,278 voters throughout Russia for the English-language daily, the Moscow Times.

Mr Primakov's move is likely to gain some ground for OVR but it may be too late in the campaign to make for a significant increase in votes.