Vladimir Putin, Russian president, on Monday night hailed Boris Yeltsin as the father of a democratic Russia. “A man has died thanks to whom a whole new era began. A new democratic Russia was born: a free state open to the world, and a state in which power really does belong to the people,” Mr Putin said.

Yeltsin, the first elected president of the Russian Federation and a man who played a key role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, died of heart failure on Monday, aged 76.