Yeltsin Illness Stirs Rumors as Putin Steps Into Void

As Russia continued to wage war in the separatist republic of Chechnya, President Boris N. Yeltsin abruptly checked into the Central Kremlin Hospital with a high temperature and the flu Saturday, a day after a sudden announcement that he was to take a vacation.

Although he had reportedly been working in the Kremlin, the 68-year-old Yeltsin disappeared from public view about two weeks ago, and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin moved briskly into the vacuum.

The president anointed Putin as his successor when he appointed him in August, and Putin has quickly garnered popular support for his ruthless stance against Chechnya.

Amid mounting speculation that the president was in the midst of another of his regular health crises, spokesman Dmitri D. Yakushkin announced Friday that Yeltsin was to go on vacation--without providing the usual information about where he was going or how long he would be away.

Yakushkin said that the president’s work schedule had been “extremely intense” and that he needed a break, given his age. The president worked throughout last weekend, he said, on the Chechen crisis, the economy, approaching elections, anti-terrorist efforts, the adoption of the budget and settlement of Russia’s debts, among other things. The president was also planning trips to Japan and Turkey, Yakushkin said Friday in a news briefing.

His statement was met with sardonic skepticism in the morning headlines Saturday.

“Who controls power and the nuclear button when the president is ‘working on documents’?” ran a headline in Moscow’s Sevodnya newspaper, in a reference to the Kremlin’s frequent claims that the president is working when he is actually ill.

The Sevodnya story quoted unofficial sources as saying that the next trip Yeltsin is planning is to Germany for surgery. The president had a quintuple heart-bypass operation late in 1996, but his health has remained dicey since then, with bouts of pneumonia, other respiratory problems, a bleeding ulcer and a bad back.

Yakushkin rejected the Sevodnya report Saturday. He said the president began to feel ill only Friday night and agreed Saturday morning to go into the hospital, where he planned to watch the Russia-versus-Ukraine soccer match Saturday night.

Political analyst Andrei A. Piontkovsky, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Moscow, said that if Yeltsin suddenly died, Putin would be in a strong political position, while his rivals in the presidential race would be thrown off balance.

Under the constitution, Putin would be named acting president in the three months before an election would be held, putting him in an ideal position to build his popularity.

Putin was drafted as the heir apparent by the Yeltsin “Family”--the powerful group of relatives and aides who are widely believed to be actually running Russia and who, now that their time is lapsing, are apparently eager to install a friendly successor who will not pursue them for any alleged misdeeds after Yeltsin is gone.

“This is the agony of Yeltsin, his family and the regime. I believe Yeltsin is really very, very sick,” said Piontkovsky. “I think Yeltsin needs a new operation, and the Kremlin can no longer conceal it.

“The Family chose Putin because they thought this quiet and gray mouselike bureaucrat would obediently play their game, and it is becoming clear with every day that Putin is really playing his own game,” Piontkovsky said. “His voice grows loud, he speaks in short and brusque commands, his stride is full of arrogant swagger, and his language is full of down-to-earth jargon. He is obviously enjoying his new role and huge power with the operation in Chechnya enormously.”

On Saturday, Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery reportedly captured a strategic Chechen town after heavy fighting.

Federal troops seized the town of Bamut, in the west of the Caucasus republic, but were repelled by Chechen fighters when they tried to take more ground, Associated Press quoted a Chechen commander, Hamzat Gilayev, as saying.