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Yeltsin’s daughter ruffling Putin’s feathers | Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Yumasheva, who wielded huge and unaccountable power from behind her father's throne for years, is back and ruffling feathers in Russia with her blog. Yumasheva, who
disappeared from public view for more than a decade, has painted a hitherto unseen
picture of a shy, uncertain and nervous official who once served at her father's side.
The 50-year-old is writing a hard-hitting new blog that not only queries
Putin's version of the Yeltsin years as miserable, but also shatters his image
as a self-assured hard man, who saved the country from disintegration. She reveals
that when her father handpicked Putin as his successor, he was at first so daunted
by the prospect that he asked him to reconsider. “So many unfair things and lies
were said and written about my Papa and the 1990s,” The Telegraph quoted from
her blog. “I want to tell people what really happened back then and how I saw
things. I want to push to one side the lies that have coloured this period,” she
added. Yumasheva's assessments of Russian politics present a potentially serious
challenge to Putin’s reputation, as the presidential elections is on the horizon
in 2012, where the Prime Minister and incumbent Dmitry Medvedev will have an
undeclared two-horse race. Some people also believe that Yumasheva is eyeing the
political fray and it may be the opening salvo in her own bid for office. While she
avoids direct criticism, she openly queries the official Kremlin version of recent
Russian history - used to justify Putin's authoritarian rule. “I want us to know what
happened in our own country really recently. I want us to stop living with these
myths and lies about the 1990s. We need to know our own history,” she writes.
Crucially, she reminds people that Putin, who has enjoyed popularity ratings of
well over 60 per cent for years, was a virtual unknown before her father chose
him as his successor. |
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