in the studio with me he's a political analyst at ria novosti news agency in washington we have donald jensen he's a resident fellow at the center for transatlantic relations and in london we go to alex project he's director of russian and eurasian studies center at the university of oxford all right gentlemen crossed no rules on that i mean you can jump in anytime you want well the reason why we're doing this we're doing our series here on cross talk on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago and twenty years ago on june twelfth one thousand anyone else who became the first popularly elected president of the russian soviet federated socialist republic or basically the beginning of the demise of the soviet union that would follow later in the year dimitri barbet let's look at that time twenty years ago and how soviet union unraveled how much was yeltsin involved with that unraveling of the soviet union people talk a lot about going to chaff what about yeltsin at this time well i think there were two parallel processes going on which should not be mixed up there was the process of de