For Yeltsin, Day of Pomp Under a Pall

MOSCOW — The Kremlin bells pealed triumphantly and an artillery salute echoed around this capital’s office towers and onion domes, but nothing in Friday’s inaugural festivities could disguise the stiff walk and blurred speech of Russia’s Boris N. Yeltsin as he was sworn in as president for a second term.

The made-to-measure ceremony--a mix of democratic pledges and grand czarist-style ritual--was supposed to pump up the enthusiasm of the Russian people and allay fears that 65-year-old Yeltsin’s health had worsened so much that he could no longer rule.

It did neither. Television news for the day was dominated instead by a worsening crisis in Chechnya, where separatist fighters have humiliated Russian troops by seizing back large parts of the capital, Grozny.

Yeltsin’s office later declared today a day of mourning for Russian victims of the battle.

And the president’s first real public performance since he was reelected more than a month ago did little to reassure domestic and international watchers that he was suffering from nothing worse than what an aide, Georgy A. Satarov, has called “colossal weariness” after a hard-fought election.

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Flanked by Russian dignitaries, Yeltsin stood bolt upright and unsmiling throughout the ceremony, scarcely responding to the short speeches of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II, Central Electoral Commission Chairman Nikolai T. Ryabov and Vladimir A. Tumanov, head justice of the Constitutional Court.

Yeltsin’s only oral contribution was a 45-second vow to serve his people. It was enunciated with painful slowness and slurred if forceful delivery, as Yeltsin swore his oath of office with his right hand on a red-bound copy of the Russian constitution. Earlier plans for him to give a speech were canceled.

Indeed, the grand inaugural originally planned had gradually been whittled to the bare essentials over the past week.

From an open-air ceremony on Cathedral Square, outside the church in which Russia’s czars were crowned until the revolution of 1917, the festivities were moved indoors, ostensibly for cost reasons and fear of bad weather; a side effect was that fewer people could participate.

A ceremonial ode to the reelected leader was dropped. Since no one has agreed on wording for a post-Soviet national anthem, the tune was rung instead from church bells.

In the end, the whole affair lasted just 18 minutes.

Muted anxiety could be sensed in the heartfelt toast to Yeltsin’s continued health raised by Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin and in the rendering of Ivan Glinka’s operatic music “Life for the Czar,” which ended the ceremony.

Yeltsin, at his age, has lived eight years beyond the average life expectancy for a Russian male.

Last year, he suffered two bouts of heart disease and spent months in reclusion, although he surged back to run a no-holds-barred election campaign against Communist contender Gennady A. Zyuganov.

Aides deny that he has had any more heart problems since.

But after weeks at a sanitarium at Barvikha, outside Moscow, Yeltsin will take a still more reclusive holiday now that the inauguration is over and he has given to parliament the name of his nominee for prime minister--the incumbent, Chernomyrdin.

The Duma, or lower house, will debate Yeltsin’s nomination for Russia’s prime minister today. Yeltsin will not be there.

Anatoly B. Chubais, his chief of staff, wrote to lawmakers on Friday explaining that Yeltsin need not legally be present.

But a fight could be brewing over the president’s nominee. Communists who hold 40% of seats in the Duma say they will only back the moderate Chernomyrdin if he slows economic reforms.

But more immediate problems were on Russian officials’ minds Friday, as separatist fighters tightened their grip on Grozny, the regional capital they lost to federal forces last year at the height of the 20-month-old Chechen war.

At dawn Tuesday, the rebels dramatically stormed back there, and by Friday, as a high Russian source told Interfax news agency, the situation was “totally out of the control of the [federal] command.”

The source said federal reinforcements had been forced to pull back and separatist fighters had encircled and trapped about 7,000 Russian soldiers in the city center.

Accurate casualty figures continued to be elusive.

Interfax quoted Russian officials as saying that at least 100 members of the federal forces had been killed.

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The Chechens, as is their practice, have cited no death tolls, and because so much of the area remains cut off by the combat, no estimates have been given about the havoc wreaked upon civilians.

But at least one group of civilians, including journalists, remained trapped for the fourth day in the basement of a hotel next to Grozny’s government compound. The rest of the compound has been burned out after heavy shelling.

Radio Russia correspondent Vladimir Trushkovsky said there was no sign of reinforcements.

“We get the impression we have been forgotten,” he said in one of a series of increasingly desperate satellite telephone calls, punctuated by the crash of shell fire. The calls have been broadcast by Russian television stations.

Media bosses appealed to Chernomyrdin, viewed as a dove on Chechnya, to contact the separatists’ leaders and help save the journalists, women, children and construction workers trapped in the hotel.

Chechen separatist spokesman Movladi Udugov suggested creating corridors to evacuate civilians and the wounded.

But tough evening statements by Yeltsin’s office and Chernomyrdin’s government suggested that there would be no compromise.

“Bandits armed to the teeth are robbing and killing civilians, continuing genocide against their own people,” the Russian statement said.

Yeltsin was quoted as saying he would not let anyone speak the “language of blackmail” to federal authorities, adding: “All acts of terrorism will be crushed with determination.”