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Boris Yeltsin Dies
He had the moves.
Boris Yeltsin has died aged 76. He became Russia's first democratically-elected President in 1991, succeeding Mikhail Gorbachev.
He introduced market reforms to Russia, which had emerged blinking after long decades of Soviet Communist rule, but will probably be best remembered for climbing onto a tank when Gorbachev's opponents attempted a coup against his rule.
Two years later, in 1993, he faced down a military attempt to seize power again. He ordered troops to fire on the Russian parliament when it was held by political opponents.
While in the west he is remembered as an affable if unpredictable reformer, there was a darker side to Yeltsin's era. He ordered troops into Chechnya in 1994 and in 1999, stepped down having appointed Vladimir Putin as his successor. Ironically, Yeltsin had inadvertently paved the way for Putin's reversals of many reforms, having changed the constitution to concentrate power in the President's office.
Boris Yeltsin died of a heart attack aged 76.
