STORM2K

The Interfax news agency is citing the Kremlin in saying that the first elected Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, has died at 76.

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Former President Boris Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, has died, a Kremlin official said Monday. He was 76.

Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, but gave no cause or further information.

CNN International is citing Interfax in saying it's heart failure.

Russians won't be crying. Decorum says I shouldn't say anything more.

kevin wrote:Russians won't be crying. Decorum says I shouldn't say anything more.

Kevin,

He was a world better than the tyrant who is President of Russia now. Putin is a throwback to the worst of communist overreach (in Russia internally-not on the global stage-not yet)

Russians disagree.

kevin wrote:Russians disagree.

It's the "strong but wrong" syndrome that helped a certain other world leader get elected. I don't argue that President Putin has high approval ratings in Russia, but this is because he projects an image of strength and people gravitate towards that even though the vision this strong leader espouses is not necessarily in their best interests.

Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko have experienced Putin's style of governance up close and personal.

I haven't followed Russian politics much lately but I do remember that the mafia did infiltrate the Russian government while Boris Yeltsin was president and I do recall Yeltsin being deeply unpopular for some of his decisions. He wasn't perfect but I think he was most definitely leading Russia in a more democratic direction than Putin has.

If you study Russian politics more closely than I, I defer to you on this but things seemed to be (from my perspective as a casual observer of Russian politics) more democratic if not slightly chaotic as well in Yeltsin's Russia.