PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin was reported to have celebrated the first 100 days of his second term in office with a short walk, writes Seamus Martin from Moscow.
Sources said he is likely to leave hospital at the end of next week.
Little has been seen of Mr Yeltsin since his election in July when it was announced he was suffering from a sore throat.
The only photograph since his quintuple bypass operation two weeks ago was published at the weekend. Saturday's edition of the liberal newspaper Segodnya carried a picture of the President with his wife, Naina, and his granddaughter, Masha, drinking tea in the central clinical hospital in Moscow.
Mr Yeltsin appeared to have lost weight and was less puffy about the eyes than in photographs taken before the operation but looked somewhat frail.
Dr Sergei Mironov, the chief of the Kremlin medical centre, said Mr Yeltsin would probably be moved to the Baivikha sanatorium, outside Moscow, on Thursday or Friday and would hold talks, which might be televised, with the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, tomorrow.
The surgeon who performed Mr Yeltsin's bypass operation, Prof Renat Akchurin, said the scarred tissue which was evident on Mr Yeltsin's heart, supported his earlier suggestion that Mr Yeltsin had suffered a heart attack towards the end of his election campaign earlier this year.
On his return to full time work Mr Yeltsin will face a welter of corruption charges against his closest colleagues. Moskovsky Komsomolets, the country's most popular newspaper, claimed on Thursday that the Kremlin chief of staff, Mr Anatoly Chubais, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Ilyushin, had tried to block an investigation on the removal of $500,000 (£300,000) of government funds for use in the re election campaign. Both men have denied the charges.