Participating in the Russian NTV's weekly news and analysis programme Ltogi, Yeltsin's high-profile chief of staff Nikolai Bordyuzha said, ``Russia stands on the brink and it's necessary to take emergency measures to save it.''

Bordyuzha, a former KGB veteran, was the first Kremlin official to meet Yeltsin in the Central Clinical Hospital last Saturday. He briefed the President on key economic and political issues, Russian media reports said.

The government urgently needs to put the Russian economy back on track, to save the country from looming ``social disorder,'' Bordyuzha said, referring to the huge sums of wages arrears to the millions of state employees in almost all sectors.

According to latest official figure, the government owes $830 million in back wages.

Bordyuzha also said, there was need to cut back the huge army of bureaucrats, currently employedby the government to save the money to clear the wage arrears.

Citing a concrete example of how the state funds were being squandered, he said, over 100 Russian representative spending $5,000, Russian delegation, he added, included ``children, brothers and sisters.''

``Let us evaluate what we are spending money on. We have to make hard decisions to first pay the wages and only afterwards offices and foreign trips,'' he noted.

Bordyuzha, who is also secretary to the Security Council, has vowed to stamp out corruption and other crimes.

Last week, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, presiding over a special meeting of the Cabinet, called for a tougher fight against corruption, saying it was deepening Russia's economic crisis.