Russia’s President of eight-and-a-half years, Boris Yeltsin, resigned from office on Dec. 31. Yeltsin, who was nearing the end of his second—and therefore last--term in office, and who had suffered bouts of ill-health since 1996, had been due to retire in June 2000. According to the Russian constitution, the Prime Minister became acting President, pending elections to be held within three months, if the incumbent President resigned or became unable to perform his duties. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin therefore became Russia’s acting President.
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Yeltsin’s unexpected resignation was widely attributed to his desire to secure maximum advantage in elections to the presidency for Putin, who had been designated as Yeltsin’s chosen successor upon his appointment as Prime Minister in August. Putin, whose career had begun in the Soviet security service, the KGB, had achieved enormous popularity in Russia since his appointment as Prime Minister thanks to his vigorous prosecution of the war against “terrorism” in the separatist Russian region of Chechnya. His popularity was confirmed when, in the legislative elections held on Dec. 19 to the Russian State Duma (the lower house of the bicameral Russian legislature), the recently-formed Unity movement, to which Putin had lent his support, performed strongly [see below]. The timing of Yeltsin’s resignation appeared to have been influenced by Putin’s ability to protect him against the consequences of the mounting evidence that he and his immediate entourage, known in the Russian media as “the family”, had become involved in the corruption which was widespread within the Russian ruling class. Indeed, a few hours after Yeltsin resigned, Putin issued a decree guaranteeing him immunity from “criminal or administrative charges”, and from being “detained, arrested, searched, interrogated, or subject to a body search”.
The rumours of bribe-taking by Yeltsin and his family were given credence on Dec. 8 in an interview in Literaturnaya gazeta by Beghjet Pacolli, the chairman of Mabetex, a Swiss company which was responsible for extensive renovation work in the Kremlin. Pacolli confirmed allegations that Mabetex had paid credit card bills amounting to some US$87,000 which had been accumulated by Yeltsin and his two daughters outside Russia over a period of four years.
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