Kremlin Doctor Cautious on Yeltsin Health

MOSCOW — As rival politicians demanded that President Boris N. Yeltsin bow out of office for health reasons, the Kremlin medical chief Wednesday offered the most cautious and worrisome assessment yet of the Russian leader’s condition.

Yeltsin is suffering from double pneumonia, and the ailment is complicated by the quintuple heart bypass surgery he underwent two months ago, presidential physician Sergei P. Mironov told journalists.

Although Mironov and other Yeltsin aides criticized the political grandstanding going on behind the back of the absent president and defended him against accusations of official neglect, the revised diagnosis was their first indication that the Nov. 5 heart operation may have put Yeltsin at greater risk as he struggles with his current ailment.

Mironov said that Yeltsin so far has staved off the worst-case scenario--heart failure. But he noted that Renat Akchurin, the heart surgeon who performed the bypass on Yeltsin, has joined the medical team examining the president.

“This is a rather serious illness, double pneumonia, which causes a whole number of possible complications while the person is ill and also in the later stages of recovery,” Mironov said, making clear that Yeltsin is far from out of the woods.

The president will remain at the Central Clinical Hospital at least through the end of the week, and doctors would prefer to keep him there until the end of the month, Mironov said.

Yeltsin fell ill more than a week ago with what aides then said was a “heavy cold.” He was hospitalized Jan. 8 when diagnosed with the early stages of pneumonia.

Presidential spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky has described Yeltsin as stable but not yet improving, a conservative tone Mironov echoed in describing Yeltsin as “significantly stabilized” but still vulnerable to complications.

The sudden relapse of ill health only two weeks after Yeltsin resumed work in the Kremlin after a six-month absence has stirred a new round of speculation about his fitness to rule and spurred fresh demands for the nearly 66-year-old president’s resignation.

Viktor I. Ilyukhin, a leading Communist politician and chairman of the lower house of parliament’s Defense Committee, has set in motion the process for Yeltsin’s impeachment. Although the bill has virtually no chance of succeeding because of the strong protections for the presidency built into the constitution, it has set off a flurry of catcalls about a rudderless Russia.

Former Security Council chief Alexander I. Lebed set off for visits to Germany and the United States with vows that he will be Russia’s next president and that a new vote could be called within two months.

The Interfax news agency also quoted a Lebed aide as saying the brash retired general planned to attend President Clinton’s inauguration Monday--a move likely to suggest to Russians that Lebed has White House support. But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said he doubted Lebed had received any official invitation.

Meanwhile, ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky added his voice to the calls for Yeltsin’s impeachment, saying it would be “an honorable move” to make the president retire and get some rest.

Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, who lost to Yeltsin in the presidential race only six months ago, said his party was prepared to fight and win new elections if Yeltsin fails to serve out his four-year term.

Anatoly B. Chubais, Yeltsin’s chief of staff, called the posturing “a political farce,” and Mironov deemed speculation about the president’s health “immoral.”