Vladimir Zhirinovsky is Russia's most eccentric
and outrageous political leader, whose pronouncements now appear less as serious statements
than a form of political theatre. Despite its apparent extremism, the parliamentary
faction of Mr Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia often votes with, rather
than against, the Yeltsin government, and Mr Zhirinovsky's public statements, invariably
laced with dark humour, sometimes verge on self-parody.
Now aged 53, he shot to prominence
in 1991, when he took third place in Russia's first presidential election.
controversial demands include calls for the return of Russia's former territories in
Poland, Finland and Alaska, and expansion to the south, as far as the Indian Ocean.
The Central Electoral Commission refused to register the LDPR for the parliamentary
elections because two of the party's top three candidates violated election procedures,
so Mr Zhirinovsky hastily put together a new bloc, called "Zhirinovsky's bloc", formed
out of the Russian Union of Free Youth, and the Party of Russian Spiritual Revival, led
by his sister.