Russia marks Yeltsin's death

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised his predecessor Boris Yeltsin for bringing freedom to Russia, as he attended a graveside ceremony yesterday to mark the first anniversary of Yeltsin's death.

Mr Putin's critics accuse him of betraying Mr Yeltsin's legacy by rolling back democratic freedoms, concentrating too much power in his hands and restoring many of the attributes of the Soviet Union that Mr Yeltsin helped overturn. In fact in a symbolic moment at the memorial ceremony, a military band played a few bars of the national anthem introduced by Boris Yeltsin, then switched to the Soviet melody that Vladimir Putin reinstated as Russia's official anthem.

Senior Russian officials came to Moscow's elite Novodevichy cemetery for the unveiling of a monument to Boris Yeltsin - an austere stone sculpture evoking the Russian tricolour flag billowing in the wind.

"This flag is a testimony to the democratic aspirations cherished by our people," Mr Putin told the ceremony. "It is one of the bright symbols of our firm choice in favour of free society and civilised, advanced development."

Boris Yeltsin, who died aged 76, was a Communist leader who rebelled against his party's rule to become the first President of post-Soviet Russia. His rule was marked by a flowering of freedoms but frail and unwell, he stepped down from the presidency in December 1999 and handed over his powers to a handpicked successor, ex-KGB spy Putin.