How Putin transformed from Yeltsin's heir to Russia's tyrant

A quarter of a century ago, Boris Yeltsin anointed Vladimir Putin as his heir and appointed him Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. When he took power, many people asked, "Who is Vladimir Putin?" Today, there is no doubt that a tyrant rules Russia.

Boris Yeltsin won the presidential elections in 1991, becoming the leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He made an agreement with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine to dissolve the USSR, becoming the head of the independent Russian Federation. Although at the beginning of his first term Yeltsin enjoyed enormous public support, the growing crisis rapidly lowered his approval ratings. He did win the next election, although there were claims that he owed it to falsified results.

During his second term, Yeltsin practically changed the heads of government every year, and the list of candidates who could take the office systematically shrank. Eventually, the name Vladimir Putin came up.

It wasn't his language skills, frequent trips to the West, or connections among wealthy and influential Russians that secured his selection, as "Fakt" points out. It was because he was nondescript and posed no threat to anyone.

After Yeltsin's address on August 9, 1999, it became clear that Yeltsin had not only chosen Putin as Prime Minister but also as his successor. Although observers wondered who Putin was for a long time, it was pretty quickly possible to turn him into a hero for nearly the entire nation. Nothing indicated then that this unremarkable politician would become one of the greatest tyrants in Russia's history and the world.

Putin quickly abandoned Yeltsin's path. He moved away from the reforms initiated by his predecessor. He also dealt quite brutally with the "old" oligarchs, replacing them with new elites and entirely subordinating them. Putin had no mercy, even for those who had once helped him ascend to power.

As "Gazeta Wyborcza" recalls, Aleksei Navalny, imprisoned by Putin in a penal colony near the Arctic Circle shortly before his death, admitted that he hated Yeltsin and his associates because they gave the country to Putin, who brought terror, violence, and war upon the Russians.

Valentin Yumashev, one of Vladimir Putin's first supervisors at the Kremlin, emphasized in a conversation with the BBC that the current President of Russia and Boris Yeltsin share one thing—a sense of mission.

However, the similarities end there because while Yeltsin's goal was to lead the country out of "communist slavery," Putin's goal was to return to the past. His goal is to reverse what he considers the greatest failure in Russian history, the dissolution of the USSR. "He wants to leave as a tsar," writes "Fakt."