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And for a time, it seemed like that corruption investigation might be the undoing of Yeltsin and his family and his cronies. Vladimir Putin as head of the FSB took care of that problem for Boris Yeltsin. Putin arranged for a video to be broadcast on television that showed the prosecutor or somebody who maybe kind of looked like the prosecutor in bed with not one but two young very young females. The video was low enough quality and it was shot from sort of oblique enough angles that you couldn`t necessarily tell with the naked eye who this grown man was with these girls in this bed. But Putin stepped up in his authority as head of the FSB. Vladimir Putin assured the Russian public that he could guarantee that the man in the video was in fact that prosecutor. And so that was the end of that prosecutor and that was the end of the corruption investigation into Boris Yeltsin and his family. And in gratitude, or at least in payback, Boris Yeltsin decided that he would name as the next prime minister of Russia and then the next president of Russia that FSB guy who helped him out, Vladimir Putin.

— Rachel Maddow

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "And for a time, it seemed like that corruption investigation might be the undoing of Yeltsin and his family and his cronies. Vladimir Putin as head of the FSB took care of that problem for Boris Yeltsin. Putin arranged for a video to be broadcast on television that showed the prosecutor or somebody who maybe kind of looked like the prosecutor in bed with not one but two young very young females. The video was low enough quality and it was shot from sort of oblique enough angles that you couldn`t necessarily tell with the naked eye who this grown man was with these girls in this bed. But Putin stepped up in his authority as head of the FSB. Vladimir Putin assured the Russian public that he could guarantee that the man in the video was in fact that prosecutor. And so that was the end of that prosecutor and that was the end of the corruption investigation into Boris Yeltsin and his family. And in gratitude, or at least in payback, Boris Yeltsin decided that he would name as the next prime minister of Russia and then the next president of Russia that FSB guy who helped him out, Vladimir Putin." in the context of "Rachel Maddow Transcript: The Rachel Maddow Show 4/18/22" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Boris Yeltsin" (Quotes about Yeltsin) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Boris Yeltsin

About Boris Yeltsin

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Russian and former Soviet politician who served as the first President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1990, he later stood as a political independent, during which time he was viewed as being ideologically aligned with liberalism and Russian nationalism.