PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin, hailed by Russia's liberal press as a new man after sacking hardline security chiefs, defied parliament yesterday and prepared for his next round of trips across Russia to secure an election victory.
Supporters of his communist rival, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, regrouped and tried to breath fresh wind into their lacklustre campaign after a first round presidential election defeat.
Mr Yeltsin, in fighting mood ahead of a July 3rd runoff with Mr Zyuganov, thumbed his nose at the State Duma lower chamber by rejecting a draft law on the transfer of presidential powers. The move leaves exact procedures for handing over power uncertain.
"The president is not afraid of handing over power, but as you all understand he will not have to hand over power anyway," an aide, Mr Alexander Kotenkov, told the Duma.
Mr Kotenkov said the draft was, "dangerous" because it provided for the possibility of a new president taking his oath elsewhere than the Kremlin. This could lead, to dual power, with one president proclaimed in Moscow and a rival outside the capital, he claimed.
At the end of a week of Kremlin" shake ups and political intrigue, the opposition dominated legislature summoned President Yeltsin's new security supremo, Gen Alexander Lebed, to explain his allegations of a defence ministry conspiracy.
However, Gen Lebed changed tack and withdrew accusations that a group of generals had planned to put pressure on President Yeltsin to stop the sacking of Gen Grachev.
Mr Zyuganov, who trailed President Yeltsin by less than three percentage points in the first round, warned on Thursday that the polls could be disrupted by political infighting in the Kremlin.
The meteoric rise of Gen Lebed, who finished a strong third in Sunday's vote, has also posed, a new challenge for the communist leader as the tough talking reserve general appears to have caught the public imagination with his no nonsense approach.
Most experts agree that from now on the key factor which could decide the outcome of the election will be turnout. Some say that any turnout lower than the 70 per cent of the June 16th first round may create a danger of President Yeltsin's defeat.
Meanwhile, officials have announced that two cosmonauts will spend an extra 40 days aboard the orbiting space station Mir because of a cash shortage in Russia's troubled space programme. Mr Anatoly Tkachev, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, said the two cosmonauts, Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachev, would now return to Earth on August 30th. They have been on Mir since February 23rd.