Yeltsin’s Daughter Describes a Daunted Putin Taking the Presidency

ABC's Alexander Marquardt reports from Moscow: Over the years, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has carefully honed his image as a tough man of action – riding a horse shirtless, sparring with the national judo team, swimming in a raging Siberian river.  His authoritarian approach to the presidency resulted in sky-high approval ratings and even in his current post as prime minister he is perceived to be more powerful than President Dmitry Medvedev. But a recent description of the handover of power from President Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin on New Year’s Eve 1999 paints Putin as reluctant and unsure of his ability to govern the country. Tatyana Yumasheva, Yeltin’s daughter and a former aide who was considered to be one of the most powerful people in Russia, pens a blog garnering increasing attention in Russia. In it, she passionately tries to discredit the “unfair things and lies [that] were said and written about my Papa and the 1990s," which she says have been perpetuated by Russian leaders since Yeltsin stepped down. After Yeltsin told Putin that he was going to resign the presidency on December 31, Yumasheva writes that Putin was “troubled.” “[Putin] explained that he had asked Dad not to resign and to think about the possibility of remaining in the post until the end of his term, that he still needed time to gain experience and that it is easier if he knows that the president is around. But Dad said that the decision had been made.” “I noticed that in actual fact it was not easy for Putin to become accustomed to the thought that in two days the responsibility for the whole country would be on his shoulders.” Though shying away from outwardly criticizing Putin, Yumasheva told Medved magazine in a December interview that her father was “embarrassed and annoyed” by some of Putin’s decisions, like reviving the Soviet national anthem (albeit with new lyrics). “Of course, there are some thing [Yeltsin] would have done differently from [Putin]. But today it is Putin who is president [sic] and it is right and responsible  to act as he sees fit as opposed to how Yeltsin would see it,” she told Medved.   Besides blogging about “falsehoods,” Yumasheva writes on a range of subjects, including a recent post about how humiliation is the secret to weight loss.