title: Developments in Russian Federal- Regional Relations Since 2012
abstract: Many features of the federal structure within the Russian Federation originate in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Following the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, held a significant public profile, and was personally linked to rapid political and economic transformations that enveloped Russia during the 1990s. Particularly with the onset of the Russian-supported separatist insurgency in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine 