Yeltsin Kicks Off Campaign Promising Cash Handouts

President Boris N. Yeltsin officially began his reelection campaign Thursday with promises of cash handouts on a visit to a provincial city where his Communist rivals are strong.

Yeltsin smiled and looked relaxed as he mingled with crowds in Belgorod, about 370 miles south of Moscow, one day after he was registered as a candidate for the June 16 election.

But the carefully staged, high-security trip seemed more like a royal visit than a meet-the-people vote-winning tour.

Clearly enjoying the image of a goodly czar, Yeltsin promised to compensate investors whose savings have lost their value under the high inflation that has accompanied reform and pledged better grants for students and higher pensions for war veterans.

The president made no mention of an incident Wednesday in which a sniper fired three shots near his Moscow home. Itar-Tass news agency said a building nearby had been the target, not Yeltsin’s home. Nobody was hurt.

Yeltsin’s new promises were striking because he made them in a region where the Communists won 35% of the votes in a parliamentary election in December and the pro-government bloc of Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin won only 6%.

The 65-year-old Yeltsin, who suffered two heart attacks last year, showed no sign of health problems as he shook hands with passersby and talked to people on his way to the city center.

“I want to meet Russians and find out how they live in this region,” Interfax news agency had quoted Yeltsin as saying as he left for Belgorod, a city of about 350,000 people in an industrial and agricultural area near the border with Ukraine.

After registering his candidacy in Moscow on Wednesday, Yeltsin said that he is not afraid of the election campaign, even though he trails Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov in opinion polls.