Yeltsin’s veiled attack on new Kremlin powers

RUSSIA’S first post-Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin issued a veiled warning that President Vladimir Putin’s decision to hand sweeping new powers to the Kremlin in the wake of the Beslan hostage crisis could roll back democratic freedoms.

“We should not allow ourselves to step away from the letter - or the spirit - of a constitution that the country adopted in a national referendum in 1993,” he told the Moscow News daily.

Russia’s current constitution was drafted by Yeltsin aides amid a brutal political fight with entrenched communists who, at the time, had control over the parliament.