Putin Takes Quickly to His New Role

MOSCOW —  Acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, looking every bit the presidential candidate, spent his first full day on the job Saturday demonstrating how tough he will be to beat in an early election set for March.

While his potential rivals were still recovering from their New Year’s hangovers and the shock of former President Boris N. Yeltsin’s sudden resignation a day earlier, Putin took a campaign-style tour of war-torn Chechnya.

Skipping a gala bash at the Bolshoi Theater, Putin arrived in the Russian-held Chechen city of Gudermes early on New Year’s Day to hand out hunting knives as gifts to soldiers fighting separatist rebels in the republic. He used the opportunity to hammer home the nationalistic message that has made him popular with his countrymen.

“I want you to know that Russia greatly appreciates what you are doing,” he told officers and soldiers in remarks that were broadcast repeatedly on nationwide television. “This is not just about restoring the honor and dignity of Russia. The issues in question are much more serious than that. It is all about putting an end to the disintegration of Russia.”

By unexpectedly resigning Friday, Yeltsin handed former spy Putin a huge political advantage that will be difficult for his opponents to overcome. With fewer than 90 days until the election tentatively set for March 26, Putin is campaigning at full tilt, while his main potential rivals have yet to indicate whether they will even run.

Some analysts predict that Putin will capture more than 50% of the vote and win the presidency outright in the first round, avoiding the runoff election that would normally follow three weeks later.

“No one in Russia besides the Kremlin is ready for the presidential elections at the moment,” said former Yeltsin press secretary Pavel I. Voshchanov. “Everyone has been caught off guard. Three months is too short a period of time for the opposition to get its act together and compete with the Kremlin’s appointee.”

But Putin’s decision to head to Chechnya to visit the troops instead of joining in the New Year’s revelry highlights how important Russia’s armed forces are to his political future.

Much of his success in the election will turn on his handling of the brutal war that is the main source of his sudden popularity. And independent analysts believe that Russia is increasingly likely to become bogged down in the separatist republic as its forces battle rebels in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and in the Caucasus Mountains in the south of the republic.

Right now, however, the Kremlin is riding high from its Chechnya successes and its success in parliamentary elections Dec. 19. Treating that campaign as an unofficial presidential primary, pro-Kremlin forces pummeled the once-fearsome Fatherland-All Russia bloc headed by former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov. In a stunning upset, the Unity bloc backed by Putin outpolled Primakov’s Fatherland bloc 23% to 13%.

Primakov, who was so popular six months ago that he was the odds-on favorite to win the next presidential election, would still be Putin’s most formidable opponent. But even though Primakov said two weeks ago that he would run for president, he has not spoken up since Yeltsin resigned.

“I know for a fact that intense emergency consultations have been held at the election headquarters--or whatever is left of them on New Year’s Day,” said analyst Liliya F. Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “At the moment, all the candidates are still contemplating whether to run or not. None of them have made up their minds for sure.”

The Communist Party, which polled 24% in the parliamentary elections, is certain to put up a candidate, most likely party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, who lost to Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential runoff. Duma Chairman Gennady N. Seleznyov, a Communist who is more personable and more moderate than Zyuganov, had considered running but has been aced out by the timing of Yeltsin’s resignation: He’s in a January runoff for governor of the Moscow region, and it’s politically impractical for him to run in both races at the same time.

Other candidates likely to enter the race but with little chance of winning include Grigory A. Yavlinsky of the pro-market Yabloko party and ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky. Both men’s parties also took a beating in the Duma elections.

Former Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who said last year that he would run for president, has announced his support for Putin. Krasnoyarsk Gov. Alexander I. Lebed, a retired general viewed as a strongman who could step in and bring order to Russia, has seen his role co-opted by Putin and is unlikely to run.

In addition to the timing of the election, Putin can count on two more huge advantages: the financial backing of Russia’s wealthy oligarchs and most of the country’s major media outlets.

“Financially, all the other major contenders for the presidency are bled white by the parliamentary elections and simply do not have enough resources to compete with the Kremlin,” Voshchanov said.

One of Putin’s biggest accomplishments has been in controlling the media and presenting a positive picture of Russia’s progress in the war in Chechnya. A senior Russian officer, for example, reported Saturday that powerful rebel commander Arbi Barayev, who is linked by Moscow to the kidnapping and beheading of four Western engineers in Chechnya in December 1998, had been killed in Grozny during fighting overnight. There was no independent verification.

The Russian military has been good at playing down the number of its casualties so far, but Russian officials conceded Saturday that 10 Russian soldiers are now being killed each day on average and dozens more wounded. That rate exceeds those of both the first Chechen war in 1994-96--which Moscow lost--and the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, Shevtsova said.

By moving up the presidential election by three months, the Kremlin has cut in half the amount of time in which Russian forces must appear to be winning. Putin predicted Saturday that the war could be over by the election but said troops were not operating on any timetable or with a political agenda.

“We will not be bound by any specific deadlines,” he said. “Events are unfolding in such a way that my impression is that the mission will be completed even earlier than March 26. But I will reiterate: It should not be linked to any political events.”

In Washington, President Clinton telephoned Putin on Saturday and told him he was “off to a good start,” White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said. Clinton told Putin his appointment was “encouraging for democracy” and pledged to work with him on improving U.S.-Russian relations, the press secretary said.

Lockhart noted that the two governments still have important differences, particularly over Chechnya. The call was the first conversation between the two men since Yeltsin resigned. Clinton and Putin have met briefly twice but do not know each other well.

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Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington and Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.