The memory of President Yeltsin that I will carry with me all my life is of a proud, powerful man who not only was willing to undertake big fights, but was almost eager to do so, who threw himself into major struggles, having to do with the most fundamental issues about what was going to happen to his country. He was a man who led a hard life, in many ways. And he was very hard on himself, in lots of ways. And his career, including the way in which it gets played out publicly, contained plenty of reminders of some fairly basic human frailties.
But, proud and powerful are the two words that still come to my mind when I think about President Yeltsin. And he made a mockery, a total mockery, out of the confident pessimism of a lot of the commentators who wrote him off, on any of a number of occasions. He had resilience of an extraordinary kind.
...It's quite amazing, when you think about it, that a man who by all accounts and all public opinion polls, was one of the least popular figures in Russian political and public life towards the end of his Presidency, could pick out of relative obscurity, Vladimir Putin and say, not only is this guy my Prime Minister, but he's going to be the next President of Russia. ...
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