Boris Yeltsin was Russia’s president from 1991 to 1999.
He and US President Bill Clinton had a cordial relationship.
They met 18 times, more than any other American and Russian presidents.
Yeltsin was a raging alcoholic.
During his first trip to Washington, DC in 1994, Yeltsin got shitfaced and was seen on a city street outside the White House in nothing but his underwear.
Secret Service agents found him hailing a taxi and yelling for a pizza. They quietly returned him to his residence where guards mistook him for a drunken intruder.
Days later, Yeltsin left Irish government representatives waiting on an airfield tarmac to greet him as he was too drunk to get off his plane.
On an official Moscow visit, Hillary Clinton tried to keep her husband from drinking. Noting this, Yeltsin instructed his staff to make private arrangements. He then took President Clinton to a Kremlin mens room where booze awaited them. Clinton and Yeltsin returned noticeably tipsy.
During his re-election campaign, Yeltsin was often seen stumbling drunk during public appearances.
He also suffered heart attacks that were kept secret.
British officials privately worried that Yeltsin was drinking himself to death.
As the 1990s progressed and Russia’s economy sank, Yeltsin grew frustrated with the American President. He would hang up the phone on Clinton in a drunken rage.
Newly unearthed documents from the Clinton Library revealed that Yeltsin was fed up with politics and wanted to resign his position in 1998. But first he had to clear himself and his family from corruption charges.
So he told Clinton that he would pick as his successor a man who would exonerate him.
He selected a relatively low-level deputy mayor from St. Petersburg - a former KGB agent - notorious for turning a blind eye to blatant corruption charges.
Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999.
Vladimir Putin took over.
Yeltsin and his associates never faced criminal charges, despite abundant evidence of fraud and corruption.
Putin has been in control ever since.
ALSO:
Unlike his predecessor, Putin doesn’t drink alcohol.
Neither does Donald Trump.
And neither does Joe Biden.
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