Russian liberal presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky is desperately urging Boris Yeltsin to step aside and let a new generation of reformers save Russia from war, communism and the mafia.
With nine weeks left until the June 16 vote and Mr Yeltsin, 65, showing every desire to hold on to power, that act of self-sacrifice seems most unlikely.
Indeed some liberal critics insist Mr Yavlinsky, a reforming economist, is damaging the chances of the only man capable of fending off the communist challenge. That man, in their view, is Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.
Mr Yavlinsky, at 44 the youngest contender, rejected the charge in a weekend interview. But he fears the Kremlin may respond by trying to keep him off the ballot due to be finalised this week.
"I'm sure that Yeltsin feels now I am a problem to him," he said. "I'm expecting all kinds of difficulties."
He has filed the required million signatures of support to the Electoral Commission -- but recalls that this same body very nearly barred his Yabloko party from December's elections to the State Duma lower house on a technicality over signatures.
There is an air of urgency about the pudgy former boy-wonder of perestroika economics as he accuses Mr Yeltsin, the man who dispatched Soviet communism, of turning Russia against democracy and handing victory to communist frontrunner Gennady Zyuganov.
"Opinion polls are saying Yeltsin can't win in the second round.
"That's why I'm trying to make a democratic coalition in order to be in the second round and to win," he said.
"I still hope I will find a way to have real negotiations with Yeltsin."
He plays his cards close to his chest on potential pacts with other candidates.
His priority is stopping communism, he says, but he would not back Mr Yeltsin even in a head-to-head second round against Mr Zyuganov unless he made key policy changes.
"The problem with Zyuganov is that it's absolutely unpredictable what those guys are going to do," says Mr Yavlinsky, who shot to fame in 1990 when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev rejected his "500 Days" plan for a crash shift to capitalism.
"The problem with Yeltsin is that...if he continues four years more we would really have an oligarchic, over-monopolistic, criminal state covered with the mafia."
He says he is talking "all the time" to Mr Yeltsin's entourage, trying to persuade them the president should stand down. But he last spoke to the president himself six months ago.
Mr Yavlinsky took on the mantle of top liberal after the party of his main rival, former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, crashed out of parliament in December. Yabloko came fourth.
He pledges to complete the halting shift to a market economy by breaking up cosy monopolies run by businessmen close to the administration and reinforcing private property rights.
Raising taxes on rich oil and gas firms, halting the costly war in Chechnya, slashing bureaucracy and encouraging Russians to stop sending their savings abroad would provide cash to help the poor who are turning to communism, Mr Yavlinsky says.
Halting the war in Chechnya may be the most eye-catching plank of his manifesto. Mr Yavlinsky would simply grant the Chechens full independence if they voted for secession.
He dismisses the chances of Mr Yeltsin, who sent the army in 16 months ago, succeeding in his latest bid to restore peace.
"They're not going to talk to him. He has no idea how to speak to the Chechen people after 70,000 people have been killed," Mr Yavlinsky says.
"Only a new president can end the war."