No Surgery Needed for Yeltsin’s Ulcer, Doctors Decide

MOSCOW — Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s ulcer will not require surgery because drug treatment appears to be working, his doctors decided Wednesday.

Yeltsin, who has been hospitalized five times since his 1996 reelection, underwent a gastroscopy Wednesday, in which a fiber-optic thread with a tiny camera was passed through his mouth into his stomach, allowing doctors to inspect the ulcer.

“Treatment is underway, and no situations that would give cause for worry have appeared,” Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Nikolai N. Bordyuzha, was quoted as saying.

Presidential spokesman Dmitri D. Yakushkin said the exam showed that Yeltsin’s ulcer had “stopped bleeding, the inflammation and swelling of tissue stopped and initial signs of healing appeared,” Russian news agencies said.

Yeltsin, 67, has not been to his Kremlin office so far this year. Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov now runs most of the country’s day-to-day operations and is leading efforts to pull the nation out of its economic crisis.