His Kremlin advisers, they noted, run the gamut from economic reformers to little-known intelligence operatives.

"These are beasts, not people," said Aslan Aslakhanov, a Kremlin adviser on the Chechen war.

A Kremlin adviser said the Time Magazine story was "disinformation" planted by the C.I.A.

"There is an artificial attempt to put his role in a bad light," one Kremlin adviser said of the general.

"He is tremendously guilty," said Georgi A. Arbatov, the head of the U.S.A. Institute and a longtime Kremlin adviser.

The Kremlin advisers around him, Aleksandr Lebed foremost among them, are independent men with disparate agendas.

Mainly, Kremlin advisers say, she acts as a guardian of the President's health and image.

A German newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, today quoted a former Kremlin adviser as predicting that Mr. Honecker would soon be sent home to face his accusers.

"The president underlined that there would be no deprivatization," Andrei N. Illarionov, a senior Kremlin economic adviser, told the Interfax news agency Thursday.

He has also forced out Mr. Yeltsin's daughter, who had been a top Kremlin adviser to her father.