Alas, poor Boris

Boris Yeltsin has died, first president of the Russian Federation. He didn't amount to much in recent years, but in 1991 he seemed like a big man. That was a year before I was in Russia, when he was standing on top of Soviet tanks giving speeches in front of the Russian White House.

A year later, in 1993, the tanks were his and he was shelling that same White House, and the parliamentarians therein who had tried to impeach him. Another year passed and it was the start of the First Chechen War.

In 1999 he gave the world Vladimir Putin.