For the past two days, the Russian public has been treated to a new, improved Boris Yeltsin -- active, at times belligerent, and very, very visible. What they are seeing, according to analysts, is Boris Yeltsin the presidential candidate.


"He has started his own election campaign," said Sergei Markov, senior analyst at the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. "There is no doubt that he has decided that he is going to run."


Yeltsin himself has played coy on the issue of whether he would run for re-election in June. He has said on more than one occasion, most recently on Thursday, that he would make his announcement about whether to run for re-election only after the December parliamentary elections.


However, as Andrei Piontkowsky, head of the Center for Strategic Studies, pointed out, "Look at what the man does, not what he says."


What Yeltsin is doing is inserting himself insistently into the public eye.


In an interview with French television, which was shown in Russia on ORT, he delivered a series of pronouncements in advance of his trips to France and the United States, which will begin Friday. Strong statements on the inadmissability of having Russian troops under NATO command in Bosnia, and pronouncements on the "madness" of NATO expansion may have been intended to pave the way for negotiations on these topics with his Western partners.


"He is trying to attract attention," said Markov. "He has a series of problems to solve during his trip, and he wants to pave the way."


In addition to NATO and Bosnia, these problems include Russia's entrance into the Council of Europe, the question of raising the limits on conventional forces for Russia's troubled southern flank, and the general issue of Russia's status in the West.


Yeltsin's bellicose rhetoric is intended to alert the West, according to Markov.


"He is saying, in effect, that the West has treated us so badly that we are almost ready to change our foreign policy, including the minister of foreign affairs," said Markov, referring to Yeltsin's statement that he was looking for an acceptable replacement for Andrei Kozyrev. "He wants the West to see this as their very last warning."


On the domestic front, added Markov, Yeltsin's rash of public activity over the past few days is the busy man's classic campaign tactic. "Yeltsin's advisers tell him that he is not paying enough attention to public opinion," said Markov. "But he is too busy to do much about it. So all at once he takes a whole day and courts public opinion."


Both Markov and Piontkowsky drew attention to Yeltsin's remarks on French television about his relationship with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.


"He agrees with me on everything," Yeltsin said. "He has no aspirations to the presidency."


This, said Piontkowsky, is quite a revealing slip of the tongue: When asked about the rumors of discord between the two men, the only topic that Yeltsin saw fit to mention was the presidency.


Much speculation has surrounded Chernomyrdin, who became a popular hero of sorts after his handling of the Budyonnovsk hostage crisis. While the prime minister has repeatedly denied that he has designs on his boss's job, he is often mentioned as a strong prospect should Yeltsin decide not to run.


Piontkowsky also highlighted Yeltsin's harsh words for Kozyrev and Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, both of whom have been targets for presidential ire recently. "Yeltsin is shedding two liabilities in preparation for his presidential campaign," he said. "That could be the most positive aspect of all this activity over the past two days."


But as Andrei Zagorsky, vice rector of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, pointed out, this is only the beginning. "I do not pretend to know what Yeltsin is thinking," he said. "But I will say, these are just the seeds. The flowers will come later.