International

Valentin Yumashev, the son-in-law of former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin who helped Vladimir Putin come to power, has quit his role as a Kremlin advisor, two people familiar with Yumashev's thinking told Reuters.

Yumashev was an unpaid advisor with limited influence on Putin's decision-making, but his departure removes one of the last links inside Putin's administration to Yeltsin's rule, a period of liberal reforms and of Russian opening up towards the West.

Putin ordered his armed forces to attack Ukraine on Feb. 24 in an invasion that Western governments say is an act of unjustified aggression, and which Moscow calls a "special operation" necessary to protect Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine.

In March, Anatoly Chubais, another senior Yeltsin-era figure, left his role as Kremlin special envoy. This month, a diplomat in Russia's mission to the United Nations resigned over the war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Yumashev leaving his advisor role, and did not answer a call to his mobile number. Yumashev did not respond to a request for comment that Reuters sent to him.

Lyudmila Telen, first deputy executive director of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre, a foundation where Yumashev is a member of the board of trustees, told Reuters Yumashev had given up his Kremlin advisor role in April.

Asked why he left the role, she said: "It was his initiative."

A second person familiar with Yumashev's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said that Yumashev in April ceased to be a presidential advisor.

Under Yeltsin, who was Russian president from 1991 to 1999, Yumashev served as a Kremlin advisor and later as Kremlin chief of staff. He is married to Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana.

Yumashev was running the presidential administration in 1997 when Putin, a former KGB spy who had been given a middle-ranking administrative job in the Kremlin a year earlier, was promoted to be deputy Kremlin chief of staff.

That promotion provided the springboard for Putin to be anointed as Yeltsin's heir apparent, and win a presidential election in 2000 after Yeltsin had stepped down.

Though Putin's policies over the years have diverged from the values that Yeltsin espoused, the Russian leader has kept his ties to the former first family.

In January 2020, according to the Kremlin website, Putin visited Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana at her home to congratulate her on her birthday.