Moscow: With flags flying at half mast throughout the nation's 11 time zones, Russians today mourned the death of their first popularly elected president Boris Yeltsin, who died yesterday due to heart failure. President Vladimir Putin declared a day of national mourning today and postponed his annual state of the nation address to the parliament till tomorrow, while TV channels and radio stations have suspended entertainment programmes and commercials. Throughout last night and this morning thousands of people lined up in front of Christ the Saviour Cathedral to pay tributes to the controversial leader, where Yeltsin's body lay in state, with his widow and children seated by his side. Yeltsin, 76, who ran the country through the turbulent 1990s --- from 1991 to 1999 --- has been both praised as a champion of democratic reforms and criticised for condemning millions of people to poverty due to his ill-conceived economic reforms dubbed by his opponents as "shock without therapy". As tributes pour into Moscow from across the globe, dignitaries, including former US Presidents George Bush (Sr), Bill Clinton, former prime ministers of Britain, Canada are expected to attend his funeral later today in the cemetery of Novodevichy Convent.
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