Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that former President Boris Yeltsin's last words to him was: "Take care of Russia."
Yeltsin died on April 23, 2007, when Putin was Russian president, Xinhua reported.
"Every outgoing or incoming president (of Russia) must remember Yeltsin's words," Putin wrote in a preface to a new biography of Yeltsin.
The extracts from the book along with Putin's preface were published in one of Moscow's weekly magazines.
Putin wrote that he was unable to judge Yeltsin impartially.
A judgement of what Yeltsin had done could be made "neither by our generation, nor by our children, perhaps," wrote Putin.
Yeltsin hand-picked Putin, then a little-known St. Petersburg official, as acting prime minister in the fall of 1999. Four months later, he was made acting president by Yeltsin, who surprisingly stepped down on Dec. 31, 1999.
Putin successfully won the 2000 presidential elections and served two terms until 2008.
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