Impeachment proceedings against President Boris Yeltsin may begin in earnest today if his opponents in parliament succeed in setting a date for a vote on the issue, probably in November.
However, despite the Russian leader's illness, his unpopularity and his loss of authority among the ruling elite, it will be hard for the divided opposition to move in for the kill.
The impeachment process has to overcome four obstacles. It needs the votes of two-thirds of the members of both houses of parliament, and the all-clear from judges in the supreme court and the constitutional court.
All four institutions, particularly the courts, have sizeable numbers of Yeltsin supporters, and even greater numbers who might want the President to resign of his own accord, but would balk at the implications of effectively putting him on trial.
The most controversial aspect of the impeachment attempt is the charges themselves, drafted by a committee made up of members of the Communist Party and the left-liberal Yabloko movement.
To be removed from office, the constitution demands that a president must have committed "high treason, or some other grave crime". Two charges - bringing about the collapse of the Russian armed forces, and genocide against the Russian people - have been held back by the committee. Of the three that remain, two - complicity in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the bombardment of the White House in 1993 - are legally awkward because the events concerned happened before the current constitution came into force.
The fifth charge, relating to Mr Yeltsin's responsibility for the carnage in Chechnya, is by far the most dangerous to him, and gives the impeachment threat what bite it has. Yet even this would be hard to get past the supreme court.
Sick, erratic and out of touch as ever, Mr Yeltsin is marginalised by the politically powerful figure of the Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, and alienated from the voters. Despised by the powerful businessmen who look on him as a liability, the president is becoming an increasingly Gorbachevian figure, technically powerful but unheeded as others plan a future without him.