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Heart disease and alcoholism

Yeltsin suffered from heart disease during his first term as president of the Russian Federation, probably continuing for the rest of his life. He is known to have suffered heart problems in March 1990, just after being elected as a member of parliament. It was common knowledge that, in early 1996, he was recuperating from a series of heart attacks and, soon after, he spent months in hospital recovering from a quintuple bypass operation (see above).

According to numerous reports, Yeltsin was alcohol dependent until 1996, when his worsening health made him give up heavy drinking. The topic made headlines abroad during Yeltsin's visit to the U.S. in 1989 for a series of lectures on social and political life in the Soviet Union. A report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, reprinted by Pravda, reported that Yeltsin often appeared drunk in public. His alcoholism was also the subject of media discussion following his meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott following Clinton's inauguration in 1993 and an incident during a flight stop-over at Shannon Airport, Ireland, in September 1994, when the waiting Irish prime minister, Albert Reynolds, was told that Yeltsin was unwell and would not be leaving the aircraft. Reynolds tried to make excuses for him in an effort to offset his own humiliation in waiting in vain outside the plane to meet him. Speaking to the media in March 2010, Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Yumasheva, claimed that her father had suffered a heart attack on the flight from the United States to Moscow and was therefore not in a position to leave the plane.

According to former deputy prime minister of Russia Boris Nemtsov, the bizarre behavior of Yeltsin resulted from "strong drugs" given to him by Kremlin doctors, which were incompatible even with a small amount of alcohol. This was discussed by journalist Yelena Tregubova from the Kremlin pool in connection with an episode during Yeltsin's visit to Stockholm in 1997, when Yeltsin suddenly started talking nonsense (he allegedly told his bemused audience that Swedish meatballs reminded him of Björn Borg 's face), lost his balance, and almost fell down on the podium after drinking a single glass of champagne.

In his memoirs, Yeltsin claimed no recollection of the event but did make a passing reference to the incident when he met Borg a year later at the World Circle Kabaddi Cup in Hamilton, Ontario, where the pair had been invited to present the trophy. He made a hasty withdrawal from the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan in February 1999 to use the facilities.

After Yeltsin's death, Michiel Staal, a Dutch neurosurgeon, said that his team had been secretly flown to Moscow to operate on Yeltsin in 1999. Yeltsin suffered from an unspecified neurological disorder that affected his sense of balance, causing him to wobble as if in a drunken state; the goal of the operation was to reduce the pain.

Bill Clinton claimed that on a 1995 visit to Washington, Yeltsin was found on Pennsylvania Avenue, drunk, in his underwear and trying to hail a taxi cab in order to find pizza.

Yeltsin's personal and health problems received a great deal of attention in the global press. As the years went on, he was often viewed as an increasingly drunk and unstable leader, rather than the inspiring figure he was once seen as. The possibility that he might die in office was often discussed. Starting in the last years of his presidential term, Yeltsin's primary residence was the Gorki-9 presidential dacha west of Moscow. He made frequent stays at the nearby government sanatorium in Barvikha. In October 1999, Yeltsin was hospitalized with flu and a fever, and in the following month, he was hospitalized with pneumonia, just days after receiving treatment for bronchitis.