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Putin Pens Foreword in Yeltsin Biography

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chairing a Cabinet meeting in Moscow this past Friday. Alexei Nikolsky

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wrote the foreword for a biography of former President Boris Yeltsin published by the Molodaya Gvardia publishing house, the Ogonyok magazine reported Monday.

Putin, who was handpicked by Yeltsin as his successor in 1999, refused to comment on Yeltsin’s policies in the foreword, saying he was biased, but adding that the time had not come yet to form a final opinion on the policies.

“The real evaluation of what the first president of Russia did will not be done by us and probably not even by our children,” Putin wrote.

“The scale of changes that happened in Russia during the late 20th century was so grandiose that only time will bring a true assessment of what was done by him,” he wrote.

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