PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin returned yesterday from the sanatorium where he has spent the past few weeks to face two new crises.
In Chechnya, rebels launched a huge attack on the capital, Grozny, and two other towns in their biggest offensive for five months. The Chechen fighters shot down four helicopter gun ships and killed and wounded scores of Russian troops. In heavy fighting, rebels took control of several main roads.
Meanwhile, the independent miners' union has threatened a nationwide coal strike from August 25th if the slate does not pay wages which have been due for months.
The two issues were the focus of a meeting between Mr Yeltsin and his Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, whose ride into the Kremlin from the country area where ministers relax in summer was itself dramatic. Just minutes before Mr Chernomyrdin's limousine zoomed past, an explosion rocked the main road which links the government dachas to central Moscow.
Muscovites are already nervous after a series of terrorist incidents, including a fatal bombing on the metro and explosions on two trolley buses which injured 30 people.
In the run up to the election, the President agreed a truce with separatist leaders and launched a follow up peace process which should have involved the gradual withdrawal of Russian troops. But no sooner was he re-elected than federal forces began attacking Chechen villagers on the pretext of wiping out rebel bases.
Yesterday's raids were a reply from the separatists, whose leader, Mr Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, had accused Russian forces of killing civilians in what he called "cynical air strikes".
The attack on Grozny was led by Mr Shamil Basayev, who gained notoriety in June, 1995, by taking hostages in a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk. A Reuters correspondent in Grozny said yesterday that several hundred fighters entered the city for the first time since March. Russian helicopter gunships retaliated by flying in waves over Grozny, where fight was reported to be easing off by evening.
But the fighting had already killed the peace process. Since Mr Yandarbiyev and Mr Aslan Maskhadov, a Chechen commander who was previously regarded by Moscow as a moderate, had given their blessing to the assault on Grozny, no further talks with them now appear possible.
For his part, Mr Maskhadov said. "Those who want to end this war should understand the option of force should be dropped, that the road of peace outlined in the Moscow and Nazran agreements (the pre-election deals) is the only way.
The renewed conflict was a blow for Mr Yeltsin, whose aides say he is exhausted, although not suffering any recurrence of the heart problem which dogged him last year.
The Communist leader Mr Gennady Zyuganov, defeated by Mr Yeltsin at the polls, has accused the Kremlin chief of reneging on all his election promises and bringing the country to the brink of chaos. However, the signs are that the state Duma (parliament), dominated by the leftist and nationalist opposition, will accept the President's suggestion that Mr Chernomyrdin stays on as prime minister, perhaps in exchange for a few minor posts for the Communists.
The new cabinet will be named after Mr Yeltsin's inauguration on Friday, in preparation for which he has ended his working holiday in the sanatorium at Barvikha outside Moscow and come back to town.