Yeltsin recovers after hip op

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin is recovering well after undergoing hip surgery last week, reports said today.

The 74-year-old is walking with the help of a supporting device.

He fell last week while on holiday on the Italian island of Sardinia and returned to Moscow after initial treatment in an Italian hospital. Doctors operated on his hip the next day and said the surgery was successful.

Valery Zolotov, the chief doctor of the elite presidential hospital complex, said Yeltsin had asked to be discharged but the hospital would not allow him to leave until two weeks after the operation, when his stitches will be removed.

He said that if all went well, the former Russian leader would be well enough in six months to play his favourite sport tennis.

Italian paramedics said Yeltsin broke his thigh bone in the fall.

Yeltsin, Russia’s first elected president after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has kept a low profile since resigning in 1999.