Putin Reveals His Response to Yeltsin's Offer of Presidency

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reminded that when the departing leader Boris Yeltsin invited him to run for the presidency, he replied that he was not ready. “If it were possible to return to that time, I would answer in the same way,” said the Russian leader in an interview with Dmitry Kiselev on the “Russia 1” television channel and “RIA Novosti.”

“This question cannot be answered because it was posed at a time, in a historical and economic context, in which the country was located, in terms of the domestic political situation, the internal security perspective, and all of this together prompted me to give my answer. ‘I am not ready for this,’” Putin said.

“And not because I was afraid of something, but because the scale of the tasks was just enormous, and the number of problems was increasing like an avalanche day by day. Therefore, I honestly said. And again, not because, I repeat, I was afraid of something. But because I thought I was not ready to solve all these problems, and God forbid, I would do something worse. That’s what we were talking about. That’s why I said this quite sincerely,” the Russian president added.

He noted that conversations with Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin were decisive. “Most importantly, in the end, what did he respond to me? He said, ‘Okay, okay, okay, I understand. We will come back to this later.’ And we referred to this several times. In the end, he said, ‘I am an experienced person, I know what I am doing, what I am offering.’ Well, he said other things to me. Probably it is awkward to praise yourself, but well, I said such positive words,” Putin stated.