text: Yeltsin plans return to Kremlin for Dec 25 - speaker . MOSCOW 1996-12-06 Russian President Boris Yeltsin , who had heart bypass surgery a month ago , plans to return to work on December 25 , the head of the upper chamber of parliament told Interfax news agency on Friday . " Today he is a mobile , energetic man with lots of colour in his cheeks , " said Yegor Stroyev who met Yeltsin , 65 , on Friday at a country residence . " He told me that he had lost 20 kg ( 44 lbs ) which is natural after such an operation . " December 25 , a normal working day in Russia , is the fifth anniversary of Yeltsin 's arrival in the Kremlin . He took over there , and took control of the red button controlling nuclear arms , in December 1991 when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned , marking the end of the Soviet Union . Yeltsin has been shown a few times on television since his quintuple bypass on November 5 but has yet to deliver any major television or radio address to the nation . Surgeon Renat Akchurin who led the operation , told Itar-Tass news agency Yeltsin was working up to four hours a day at his residence .