Since the time the cable was written, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed Luzhkov.
Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, chairs a joint venture that owns 38% of MOR.
Mr Luzhkov, like other leading politicians, has been calling for vigilance and national unity.
Even Mr Luzhkov's chief television tormentor, Sergei Dorenko, has professed his support for Mr Gusinsky.
Mr Putin's other immediate task will be to sharpen the attack on Mr Luzhkov's Moscow base.
Moscow's banks and traders would put up the money for a Luzhkov presidential campaign.
However, 75-year-old Mr Luzhkov stressed that he remained a Muscovite and would return to face the investigators.
Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, beat his favourite populist drum, warning shops not to put their prices up.
Last week's rumour was that Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, was in line for the job.
Mr Luzhkov's mainly provincial critics see this as just another chapter in a story of metropolitan arrogance.
Mr Luzhkov's office on Tverskaya Street may well be the best power base in Russia, after the Kremlin.
The bank was used by ex-Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to fund property projects.
That has not, so far, worried the populist Mr Luzhkov, who has presented Moscow's renaissance as his personal achievement.
It means Luzhkov will never become president, though he does not understand why.
The chief beneficiary of those troubles, say Sapir and his lawyers, is Luzhkov's wife, Elena Baturina, Russia's only female billionaire.
Mr Luzhkov and Mr Primakov are positioned near the centre of Russian politics, but appeal also to some nationalist voters.
There was an interesting contrast, however, between Mr Primakov's comments and those of his political ally, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
This week Mr Primakov held a friendly meeting with Mr Luzhkov and demonstratively backed the president in the Federation Council.
And Zubov has had the support of another man thought to have presidential ambitions, the outspoken mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov.
Mr Kiriyenko's real aim, however, is probably to make Mr Luzhkov look less than spotless as a contender for the presidency.
Mr Luzhkov's tight grip on most of the Moscow media means that complaints against him are not readily aired in public.
The investigation also concerns business interests of Mr Luzhkov's wife, Elena Baturina.
But Mr Luzhkov has been careful to build alliances with provincial leaders.
The front-runners at present, then, are Mr Lebed and Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, who is one of Russia's most brazen crony-capitalists.
Moscow's powerful mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, makes sure that young men from his city serve either locally or on Russia's balmy Black Sea coast.
Mr Luzhkov was sacked by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last year.
She is an expert on Soviet affairs, and from where she sits, neither the election of Luzhkov nor that of Lebed bode well for Russian-U.S. relations.
The mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has built a business empire in a city in which prestige and politics count for more than customers or profits.
The 20-plot development, conceived in 1992, didn't hit its initial stride until 2004, when Moscow's skyscraper-loving Mayor Yuri Luzhkov cut the ribbon on the first tower.
Neither is likely to be a social or economic liberal, though Mr Lebed's views on economics swing around and Mr Luzhkov is, above all, a wheeler-dealer.
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