NEWS ANALYSIS : Russians Ask: Who’s Running the Kremlin?

The question this time around is not whether rising political tension in Russia will lead to a Kremlin coup.

It is whether the coup has already taken place.

When a Russian leader appears to lack basic information and the overarching control of a commander in chief, when his public orders are ignored and his decisions seem to be made for him by shadowy aides, the concern becomes not whether he will be overthrown but whether his supreme power has already been siphoned away by a Kremlin cabal.

Russian human rights commissioner Sergei A. Kovalev upbraided President Boris N. Yeltsin to his face Friday for allowing himself to be cushioned from reality by aides whose only aim is to please him “every 10 minutes.”

“You are surrounded by people who are pushing you toward adventures, like the one in Chechnya,” Kovalev said he told Yeltsin. “And you are giving in.”

The workings of the Kremlin under Yeltsin have always been seen as unusually mysterious, depending heavily on which particular aides were enjoying the president’s ear for the moment. But when Russia launched its massed offensive on Chechnya on Dec. 11 just as Yeltsin was reportedly checking into the hospital for a minor operation, they took on an especially sinister tinge.

Russian media proclaimed the triumph of the “party of war” in Yeltsin’s retinue--the hawkish leaders of what Russians call the “power ministries,” the portfolios such as defense and interior that carry with them the ability to use force.

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Two hard-liners figure most prominently in analyses of how Yeltsin came to sanction the military incursion into Chechnya: Oleg I. Lobov, secretary of the Russian Security Council, and Maj. Gen. Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s chief of personal security and his closest crony.

In the last four weeks, the handling of the Chechnya crisis has only reinforced speculation that Yeltsin’s control of his government, army and intelligence services is largely nominal.

The Russian president himself demanded confirmation from the Russian Security Council on Friday that his orders to stop the aerial bombing of Grozny, the Chechen capital, had been obeyed--as if he had not been reading reports on the operation.

Last month, just hours after Yeltsin issued his first order to stop air attacks on civilian targets in Grozny, Russian bombers hit a major orphanage in the city. The president remained silent, although the news was readily available in the media, including television footage.

Did he not care, or had he become so distanced from running the country--perhaps by worsening health--that he was unaware?

On Saturday, Yeltsin raised further doubts about his condition by failing to appear at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the rebuilding of a monumental Moscow cathedral demolished by Josef Stalin. He has also postponed a major address to Parliament formerly scheduled for this Wednesday.

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Yeltsin has made an unfortunate habit of disappearing during crises. This time he has especially good reason. His absence may later give him a chance to distance himself from responsibility for the death and destruction wrought by the Chechnya offensive.

But it is not clear that Yeltsin’s distance has been voluntary. If his orders to stop the bombing had really been simply ignored, the daily Izvestia wrote, it could be that Yeltsin “erroneously assesses his own powers.”

“It is impossible to understand a situation when a president who calls himself a guarantor (of his citizens’ rights) says one thing whereas something completely different--absolutely opposite--is happening in the country,” the influential daily wrote.

Questions about who is really running the country have focused lately on Korzhakov, a beefy, 44-year-old KGB lifer.

Korzhakov has kept a very low profile, although he figures prominently in Yeltsin’s memoirs as an ever-stalwart and resourceful right-hand man. Last month, however, a major scandal erupted when Korzhakov interfered in Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin’s handling of Russian oil quotas--and made the mistake of putting some of his orders on documents that were later leaked to the press.

Suddenly, Korzhakov’s tremendous power--greater power than the prime minister wields, it appears--was disclosed for all to see.

“If such things are sanctioned by the president, then it must be said that we live in a state of any sort you wish, only not democratic, where the activity of all the branches and institutions of power are strictly regulated by the law,” Izvestia wrote.

And if Yeltsin did not know, it added, then “it must be said that the real handles of power in the country are in the hands of anyone you like, but not the legally elected president, B. Yeltsin.”

Korzhakov has vehemently and publicly denied that he is the real power behind the Kremlin walls, but to little avail. And his influence on policy is believed to be mainly in the direction of authoritarian, if not brutal, decisions.

The hard-line Lobov, as head of the Security Council, which launched and has overseen the Chechnya offensive, also may be calling many of the shots in Russia’s latest aggressiveness.

Yeltsin’s apparent reliance on “a small circle” of hard-liners has raised concerns in Washington.

A Dec. 22 intelligence study, obtained by the Washington Times last week, said Yeltsin’s advisers have an agenda that “seems pretty clear: Retain power and influence by keeping Boris in place.”

To Russian human rights activists who still have some faith in the Yeltsin who helped bring down the Communist regime, the president now stands at a juncture: He could still redeem himself by reclaiming his power and stopping the Chechnya offensive, or he could passively allow the bloodshed to continue.

Yeltsin “has been living through a personal tragedy,” human rights commissioner Kovalev said. In the past, Yeltsin “has made many mistakes, but he has been able to give up wrong decisions as well. I hope very much that he will find in himself the courage to do that now.”

Times staff writer Jim Mann, in Washington, contributed to this report.