...billiard rooms. After all, today, on the birthday of the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin, everyone expresses their respect to this mastodon of politics.

Today, on the seventieth birthday of the first president, Nemtsov expressed special respect for Yeltsin. According to the leader of the Union of Right Forces, the era of the reign of the first President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, “will go down in history with a plus sign.” He noted that “the period of Boris Yeltsin’s reign was an era of democratic revolution,” and Nemtsov considers the first president himself “a real rebel and revolutionary.” It is now becoming clear that “Yeltsin was predictable” in the sense that “he knew that freedom was better than communism, private initiative was better than bureaucracy.” According to Nemtsov, this was precisely the basis of Yeltsin’s predictability.

At the same time, Nemtsov believes that “the Yeltsin era left a lot of problems,” including: “the unresolved Chechen issue, the difficulties of privatizing state power, a high level of corruption, a low level of governance in the country and a low standard of living.” However, “it would be wrong to demand from one person that he solve all of Russia’s problems in a decade,” Nemtsov is sure.

And if we compare the current president and the first head of Russia, then Nemtsov’s preference is given to the one who called him from Nizhny Novgorod and appointed him to the post of deputy prime minister. Once, or rather on June 15 last year, he even spoke about this in the following way: “Putin does not understand that every day he is losing the trust of citizens, and this is sad. Even Yeltsin, when he was at the Central Clinical Hospital, always knew about such things (the Media-Most scandal), and Putin, thank God, is healthy in Europe.” Thus, Nemtsov made it clear that he considered Putin a less capable leader than even Yeltsin, who was in the Central Clinical Hospital.

Nemtsov admires Yeltsin and gives him balloons...