Yeltsin's succession: Blair and Chirac read the tea leaves

They got it wrong, as you'd expect. But the discussion was interesting.

When it came to Russia in early 1999, few matters preoccupied Western policy makers more than Yeltsin’s seemingly imminent departure, and what would happen once he bowed out (or, as was more likely, was carried away).

Opinions diverged as to Yeltsin’s likely successor. In the following conversation in Amman (of all places), where they met on the sad occasion of King’s Hussein’s funeral, Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair tried to imagine Russia after Yeltsin. Here’s the entirely of the document: