U.S. Officials Wary After Russia Vote : Reaction: They see hope in a strengthened Yeltsin--and threat from renewed nationalism.

For the United States and the West, Russia’s surprising election returns Monday offered both a slender hope and an alarming threat.

The hope, President Clinton and other officials said, is that Russia’s new constitution, with its stronger presidential powers, will allow President Boris N. Yeltsin to press forward with fundamental political and economic reforms.

The threat is that ultranationalist leader Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, whose party won more parliamentary seats than any other, will succeed in taking Russia’s foreign policy on a dangerous lurch toward aggressiveness--and a new kind of confrontation with the West.

Zhirinovsky is unlikely to command a majority in the new Russian Parliament, officials noted. Even so, his strong showing is almost certain to pull Yeltsin toward a more assertive nationalist posture on some issues. And that could mean political conflict with the United States over such issues as arms sales (Zhirinovsky wants to sell Russian weapons to Iraq, Serbia and other hostile states), Russian military action in former Soviet republics and the stalled Russian military withdrawal from neighboring Latvia and Estonia.

“We are clearly going to have a Russia that is more assertive of its own interests,” a senior State Department official said after a harried day of analyzing fragmentary election returns.

“Instead of panicking, we’ve got to live through it and work with it,” he said. “We’ve got to redouble our efforts to lash Russia into the world system.”

In that sense, this week’s unusual election could mark the end of the honeymoon between Russia and the West that began in the days of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who insisted that the interests of Russia and the United States need rarely conflict.

Instead, the United States now finds itself aiding Russia with one hand and trying to restrain its imperial ambitions with the other.

In the short run, Vice President Al Gore must make the delicate political decision whether to meet with Zhirinovsky while he visits Moscow this week. And President Clinton must decide whether to go ahead with a proposed address to the new Parliament on his visit to Moscow next month. The speech, originally designed as a triumphant appearance before Russia’s first truly democratic legislature, now carries the risk of embarrassment.

Officially, Clinton and his aides tried to put a positive spin on the election returns, pointing to the good news that Yeltsin’s constitution was approved.

“I’d like . . . to say how very pleased I am that the new constitution was adopted, because this now lays a foundation for a long-term legitimacy for democracy,” Clinton told reporters in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where he was attending a conference on domestic entitlements.

And Clinton even expressed some sympathy for the Russians who voted for Zhirinovsky, likening them to Americans who voted for “protest candidates” such as Texas populist Ross Perot.

“I think in any country where ordinary people are having a hard time, you’re going to have some significant protest vote--including the United States,” he said.

Senior State Department officials noted that the composition of the new Russian Parliament may be unclear for months because many of its members ran as independents and are largely unknown outside their constituencies.

Some predicted that the new Parliament actually will have more reformist members than the previous one, which was dominated by former Communist bureaucrats.

Still, some officials acknowledged that they are mostly worried that Yeltsin might feel a need to make at least a bow in the direction of Zhirinovsky’s nationalist supporters by adopting some of the features of the rightist leader’s truculent foreign policy.

Zhirinovsky has called for Russia to retake the republics of the former Soviet Union that won independence in 1991, denounced foreign aid and investment in Russia and opposed membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for East European countries.

Even a modest turn toward nationalism in Moscow poses significant problems for the United States, experts said.

“Nothing matters to the West more than resolving the Russian-Ukrainian nuclear standoff, and this is not helpful to that,” said Stephen Sestanovich of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The United States has been pressing Ukraine to give up its nuclear warheads, he noted, but the rise of Zhirinovsky “says to Ukraine: You’re going to need your nukes to protect yourself.”

Likewise, he said, Zhirinovsky’s triumph strengthens those in Russia who want to sell military technology to countries such as Iraq, Iran and Serbia.

The election also may cause problems for Clinton in Eastern Europe, where the President has proposed a delay in extending a full NATO security guarantee to such countries as Poland and Hungary.

“From now on, the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians have something to worry about,” said Dmitri Simes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

And the results will almost surely make it more difficult for the Administration to seek continued large-scale aid for Russia.

“What is needed now is some very clear thinking about U.S. interests,” Simes said. “The Administration needs to be very honest about areas where there is going to be conflict with Russia and to stop ignoring it or, in some cases, whitewashing it. Otherwise they are inviting trouble--because Congress is heading toward a sudden disillusionment with Russia, and that could cause an overreaction.”