Yeltsin Denies Depression Claims

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Friday denied claims by his former top bodyguard that he suffers from chronic depression and has tried several times to kill himself.

“It is senseless to enter into polemics with a man blinded by grudge and moved in his attitude to the president only by the feeling of revenge,” a statement from Yeltsin’s office said.

Alexander Korzhakov was quoted Friday as saying that Yeltsin’s suicide attempts stopped only after he suffered his first major heart attack in 1995.

Korzhakov was Yeltsin’s top bodyguard and a close confidant for nearly 11 years before being fired in a bitter Kremlin power struggle last year. The two men have feuded ever since.

Korzhakov told the Guardian newspaper in London that Yeltsin attempted suicide in 1990 by jumping off a bridge into the Moscow River and tried again two years later by locking himself in his sauna.