i'm not here to discuss the details of the economy in yeltsin's russia. i can recommend you can read myg book because i'm not telling you about the strong flourishing democracy or economy under yeltsin. i'm highly critical of yeltsin'e rule but under yeltsin we built a feeble foundation for future change. now vladimir putin changed the situation but for much worse. corruption under the putin is the system.tes. so for instance listen to the nixon kennedy debates, the first televised debates where jfk was far more hawkish than the -- republican candidate and the doctrine of defending democracy and opposing communism. and the democrat did a tremendous job by saving hundreds of millions of people from soviet expansionism. we could hear voices from far left to far right. and your complaint about americans losing trillions of dollars, it's a long story, it would require a lengthy debate but remember that american corporations are the most successful multinational corporations that have been doing business elsewhere and to pretend that america could walk away, i

russia-- in order to go from communism to capitalism-- boris yeltsin, who was the president of russia at the time, decided that the best way to do that was to do what they called mass privatization. to give everything away for free to the people. so the-- the math was pretty-- was-- was-- similarly crazy to the whole polish situation. they-- they issued vouchers to each person. 150 million vouchers. they traded for $20 each. so $20 times 150 million gets you to $3 billion of the vouchers. and that was exchangeable for 30% of all the shares of all russian companies. which meant that the value of the entire russian economy was $10 billion. and so we started to just bet on the vouchers without knowing what the price was going to be. >> you were the most successful hedge fund in the world. probably in the history of the world. >> i was the most successful hedge fund. i had more than $1 billion, which was a huge amount of money-- in any circumstance, but certainly back then, and in russia. >> in the middle of all this thing vladimir putin comes to power. where did your interests align with

coming back to what boris yeltsin -- excuse me. putin. going back 15 years there.ition is the syrian people. he does agree on a step by step process. that is where the agreement is with the united states. boris. >> we will keep an eye on what the u.n. does. thank you, nic. >>> u.s. and russia focusing on the long term solution to the civil war in syria. talks continue in new york as russian military keeps up air strikes in the country. correspondent matthew chance is embedded with the military in the air base in syria. matthew. >> reporter: we have the rare access to russia's huge air base in syria. it means we are able to see close up how hard russia is pressing air war in the country. to give you a sense of the atmosphere, it is tense. a real military operation. we are under tight security. the air is thick with the smell of jet fuel. the whole base reverberates to the roar of jets on the way to bombing missions. russian officials said they carried out dozens of strikes killing more than 300 militants, including isis fighting the syrian government. we got a sense

. >> even russian president boris yeltsin seems comfortable on the dance floor. >> kick it!liticians are quite so musically inclined, however. just ask karl rove. ♪ tell me what is your name >> mc rove. >> i saw this one live, i'm afraid. it was even scarier to watch karl rove rapping in person than on the tv. he's got some of the movements that only dick cheney could manage. >> mc rove. ♪ our dnc is what they're calling me ♪ ♪ our dnc >> colin powell is equally musically challenged. here he is singing at a security meeting in indonesia. ♪ >> and bad boy blagojevich is caught on camera taking on elvis. ♪ >> yikes! don't quit your day jobs, fellas. oh, wait, never mind. perhaps they should have made a speedy escape like president bush tried to do after this press conference. >> this was one of the famous episodes with george bush looking like he didn't know what he was doing because he didn't even know where the door was. >> i was trying to escape. >> and talk about wanting to escape, who can forget vice president dan quayle exercising his spelling expertise in front of the c

yeltsin was not that able to exercise all powers given to him by the constitution, although some experts used the image of the elect monarchy with regard to the regime. now the 1st person can enjoy almost all this power. pretty much the same which does not balance the power of the 1st person by any institution, and institutions are weak and became weaker after 2014 and the political regime. and 1st of all i would say that in my view buddhism cannot survive. i hope he will survive. >> isn't this the eternal cycle of russian history? arbitrary centralized power followed by a time of trouble in the starship, whether it's stalin. a great ivan the terrible in and and people forgetting the injustices of the arbitrary regime and then this power is arbitrary, institutions are undeveloped cycle repeats itself without end. >> it can be seen as a vicious circle. i would look at federalism or lack of federalism. pressure is huge country by its size. should the tyranny. so federalism is absent, and due to the fact that none of russian rule including present-day are here to exercise federalism, especi