Word: yeltsin
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...that argument. Poland and the Czech Republic are a vast distance from Iran, so Russian public opinion needs little persuasion by the Kremlin to worry that NATO's true aim is to line up bases against Russia. Such fears have been growing since the mid-1990s. Presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin had never imagined that NATO would recruit the states of the former Soviet bloc into its membership. But Russia at the time was on its knees economically. It could not afford to fall out with the U.S. and its allies...
...Russian President has avoided explaining any new "national idea." This was a dig at the late Boris Yeltsin, who was forever re-explaining what he thought about Russia's destiny. Putin says he does not intend to release a political testament before he steps down in 2008. He insists that what counts is not rhetoric but action...
Things came to a head in 1993, when Yeltsin suspended Parliament and called for new elections. When foes in the legislature armed themselves and refused to leave, then spilled out violently into the streets, Yeltsin brought in the tanks. I remember watching from a rooftop across the street as shell after shell was fired into Russia's highest legislative body. In the name of democracy, Russia's President had suspended, and now was bombing, his Parliament. And the West mostly went along, convinced that it was necessary to support this flawed leader because the alternatives seemed far worse. Civil...
...finest moments, Yeltsin showed a side of Russia that the West could believe in, a Russia that shared the West's values and interests. The irony is that Yeltsin's more enduring legacy may be that he delivered a weak nation to a successor who is fashioning once again a Russia that is a threat to the West...
Russian mourners bid farewell to Boris Yeltsin...