Boris Yeltsin's condition stabilized Saturday, but Kremlin doctors didn't report significant progress in their battle with the Russian president's pneumonia.
The presidential press service said doctors at the Kremlin hospital were treating Yeltsin with antibiotics and described him as "somewhat" more active.The chief Kremlin doctor, Sergei Mironov, said Yeltsin caught a cold over the holidays that turned into pneumonia in both lungs. He said Yeltsin's lungs sounded clearer Saturday.
"We cannot say the crisis is over, but we can see an improvement," he told ORT television.
Yeltsin's latest illness, which Mironov described as "disturbing and sad," has underscored the 65-year-old president's fragility and left Russia once again without a hands-on leader.
"It's become obvious the president is too weak for real state work," the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said Saturday.
"Let doctors and God help Boris Nikolayevich," it said. "But someone should also have pity on Russia, more and more resembling a drifting piece of ice."