Tatyana Yumasheva, daughter of Boris Yeltsin, is ruffling feathers in Russia with her blog.

Tatyana Yumasheva was the "Lady Rasputin" who wielded huge and unaccountable power from behind her father's tottering throne for years.

But after disappearing from public view for more than a decade, the daughter of the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin, is back.

And, in what many believe may be the opening salvo in her own bid for office, she has painted a hitherto unseen picture of a shy, uncertain and nervous official who once served at her father's side... today better known to the Russian public as Vladimir Putin.

Ms Yumasheva, now 50, is writing a hard-hitting new blog that not only queries Mr Putin's version of the Yeltsin years as shambolic and miserable, but also shatters his image as a self-assured hard man who saved the country from disintegration. She reveals that when her father handpicked Mr Putin as his successor, he was at first so daunted by the prospect that he asked him to reconsider.