President of Russia since 2012 is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a politician and former intelligence officer from Russia who was born on October 7, 1952. Since 1999, Vladimir Putin has held both the presidency and the prime ministerial office continuously: as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012, and as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and 2008 to 2012. Since Joseph Stalin, he is the Russian or Soviet leader with the longest tenure.
Vladimir Putin Info
| Born | 7 October 1952 (age 71 years), Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Presidential terms | 7 May 2000 – 7 May 2008, 31 December 1999 – 7 May 2000, 7 May 2012 – |
| Spouse / Age | Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya (m. 1983–2014) 66 Years |
| Previous offices | Prime Minister of Russia (2008–2012), |
| Organizations founded | National Guard of Russia |
| Aunt | Anna Putina |
| Cousin | Lyubov Ivanovna Shelomova |
| Children | Mariya Vladimirovna Vorontsova Katerina Tikhonova |
| Age | 71 Years |
After serving for sixteen years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB and becoming a lieutenant colonel, Putin left the position in 1991 to start a political career in Saint Petersburg. He relocated to Moscow in 1996 to work in President Boris Yeltsin’s administration. Before being named prime minister in August 1999, he held temporary positions as secretary of the Russian Security Council and director of the Federal Security Service (FSB). After Yeltsin resigned, Putin took over as acting president and was elected to his first term in office in less than four months. In 2004, he was then reelected. Under Dmitry Medvedev, Putin held the position of prime minister once more from 2008 to 2012, as a result of the constitution’s prohibition on two consecutive presidential terms.
was reelected in 2018 after being elected president in 2012 amid accusations of fraud and protests. Following a vote, he ratified constitutional revisions in April 2021, one of which permitted him to seek reelection twice more, thereby prolonging his term as president until 2036.
Early Career
Putin studied law at Leningrad State University, where his tutor was Anatoly Sobchak, later one of the leading reform politicians of the perestroika period. Putin served 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB (Committee for State Security), including six years in Dresden, East Germany. In 1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of lieutenant colonel and returned to Russia to become prorector of Leningrad State University with responsibility for the institution’s external relations. Soon afterward Putin became an adviser to Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg. He quickly won Sobchak’s confidence and became known for his ability to get things done; by 1994 he had risen to the post of first deputy mayor.
In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow, where he joined the presidential staff as deputy to Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin’s chief administrator. Putin grew close to fellow Leningrader Anatoly Chubais and moved up in administrative positions. In July 1998 Pres. Boris Yeltsin made Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the KGB’s domestic successor), and shortly thereafter he became secretary of the influential Security Council. Yeltsin, who was searching for an heir to assume his mantle, appointed Putin prime minister in 1999.
Although he was virtually unknown, Putin’s public-approval ratings soared when he launched a well-organized military operation against secessionist rebels in Chechnya. Wearied by years of Yeltsin’s erratic behaviour, the Russian public appreciated Putin’s coolness and decisiveness under pressure. Putin’s support for a new electoral bloc, Unity, ensured its success in the December parliamentary elections.
Education
Putin enrolled in School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, which was close to his house, on September 1, 1960. In his class of roughly forty-five students, he was one of the few who had not joined the Young Pioneers yet. He started doing sambo and judo when he was twelve years old. He cherished reading Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin’s writings in his leisure time. Putin speaks English and German as supplementary languages. He attended Saint Petersburg High School 281, where he studied German.
After enrolling in the Andrei Zhdanov-named Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University) in 1970, Putin completed his legal studies there in 1975. “The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law” was the topic of his thesis.38 He was compelled to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) while he was there, and he did so until the organization disbanded in 1991.
Putin got to know Anatoly Sobchak, an assistant professor who specialized in commercial law and who went on to co-write the French corruption schemes and the Russian constitution. Sobchak had an impact on Putin’s career in Saint Petersburg, while Putin had an impact on Sobchak’s career in Moscow.
His thesis on the strategic planning of the mineral economy earned him a Ph.D. in economics (Candidate of Economic Sciences) from Saint Petersburg Mining University in 1997.
KGB Career
Putin enlisted in the KGB in 1975 and received his training at Okhta, Leningrad’s 401st KGB School. He began his career in the counterintelligence division of the Second Chief Directorate after training, and then he was moved to the First Chief Directorate in Leningrad to monitor foreign nationals and consulate personnel. Putin was dispatched to Moscow in September 1984 to attend the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute for additional training.
Numerous stories, supported by government records and eyewitness statements from New Zealand, have suggested that Putin was deployed there by the KGB. Russian security services have never verified this. Putin allegedly served in Wellington and Auckland, according to claims made by former prime minister David Lange and mayor Bob Harvey of Waitākere City. He supposedly spent some time in central Wellington working secretly as a Bata shoe salesman.
He worked as a translator in Dresden, East Germany, from 1985 to 1990, under a false identity. Putin reportedly rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel while serving as one of the KGB’s liaison officers to the Stasi secret police while he was stationed in Dresden. Putin received a bronze medal for “faithful service to the National People’s Army” from the East German communist state, according to the official Kremlin presidential website. Putin expressed his satisfaction in public about his operations in Dresden, reminiscing about his run-ins with anti-communist demonstrators in 1989 who tried to take over the Stasi buildings in the city.
Russian-American Masha Gessen said in their 2012 biography of Putin that “Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB”. Both Vladimir Usoltsev, Putin’s former KGB comrade, and Markus Wolf, the former leader of Stasi intelligence, minimized his role. In 2020, journalist Catherine Belton claimed that Putin’s support for the terrorist Red Army Faction, whose members frequently hid in East Germany with the help of the Stasi, and his involvement in KGB coordination were being covered up by this downplaying. It was desirable that Dresden be considered a “marginal” town, with minimal presence from Western spy agencies.
An unnamed individual claiming to be a former member of the RAF stated that at one of these meetings The militants gave Putin a list of weapons that were eventually supplied to the RAF in West Germany while they were in Dresden. According to Klaus Zuchold, a self-proclaimed Putin recruit, Putin worked with Rainer Sonntag, a neo-Nazi, and tried to bring in the author of a poison study. According to reports, Putin met with Germans to recruit them for positions related to wireless communications along with an interpreter. Due to the travels of German engineers he hired to South East Asia and the West, he became involved in wireless communications technologies in that region. Der Spiegel’s 2023 investigation, however, revealed that the unnamed source was “considered a notorious fabulist” with “several previous convictions, including for making false statements” and had never been an RAF member.
Net Worth of Vladimir Putin
The net worth of Vladimir Putin is very controversial as being the richest person in the entire world. According to some standard sources the net worth of the Russian President is allegedly more than $200 billion. However, the Russian government and Putin himself personally have declined all claims about his net worth and his personal life. Despite the fact that Putin is rich, Forbes is not able to put him on the list of Forbes Billionaires because they can’t verify his billion-dollar net worth.
As per the sources the official salary of Vladimir Putin, as the Russian President, is approximately around $140,000 yearly. He also has an official 800 square feet apartment and three personal luxury cars. According to the government, his family lives in a modest house in Moscow but his lifestyle completely tells a different story.
Political Career
1990–1996: Saint Petersburg Administration
Putin was appointed by Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak in May 1990 as an advisor on foreign issues. In a 2017 interview with Oliver Stone, Putin stated that he left the KGB in 1991 after Mikhail Gorbachev was overthrown because he disagreed with what had transpired and did not want to be involved in the intelligence community under the new government. In 2018 and 2021, Putin made statements suggesting that he may have pondered or worked as a private cab driver in order to supplement his income.
He was appointed head of the Mayor’s Office’s Committee for External ties on June 28, 1991, and given charge of registering company ventures and fostering foreign investments and international ties. Within a year, Putin was the subject of an investigation by Marina Salye’s city legislative council. It was determined that he had misrepresented costs and allowed the export of metals worth $93 million in return for food aid from abroad that never materialized. Even though the investigators suggested that Putin be removed from office, Putin continued to lead the Committee for External Relations until 1996. He held a number of additional governmental and political posts in Saint Petersburg from 1994 to 1996.
Putin was named first deputy chairman of the Saint Petersburg government in March 1994. He established the Saint Petersburg chapter of the pro-government Our Home – Russia political party, which was established by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as a liberal party of power, in May 1995. He led that party’s Saint Petersburg section from 1995 until June 1997 and oversaw the parliamentary election campaign for it in 1995.
1996–1999: Early Moscow Career
Putin, who spearheaded Sobchak’s election campaign, resigned from his posts in the municipal government when Sobchak lost his attempt for reelection in June 1996. After relocating to Moscow, he was named Pavel Borodin’s deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Department. This role was his until March 1997. He oversaw the state’s overseas holdings and coordinated the Soviet Union’s and the CPSU’s previous assets’ transition to the Russian Federation.
Putin was named chairman of the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management Department (until June 1998) and deputy chief of the Presidential Staff (until May 1998) by President Boris Yeltsin on March 26, 1997. Alexei Kudrin, a future well-known politician and Putin’s associate, held this role before him, and Nikolai Patrushev after. Putin attained the highest level in federal state civilian service, first class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation, on April 3, 1997.
Under the direction of rector Vladimir Litvinenko, Putin presented his economics candidate thesis, Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region under Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations, at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute on June 27, 1997. This was a prime example of the Russian tradition that a young, rising official produce an academic work in the middle of their career. Putin used plagiarism in his thesis. The Brookings Institution fellows discovered that fifteen pages had been lifted verbatim from an American textbook.
After Viktoriya Mitina, Putin was named First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff for the regions on May 25, 1998. On July 15, he succeeded Sergey Shakhray as head of the federal center attached to the president and leader of the commission tasked with preparing agreements on the division of regional authority. Although 46 such agreements had been signed during Shakhray’s tenure as the Commission’s head, the commission never finished any of them after Putin was appointed. Putin later canceled all 46 agreements after taking office as president.
1999: First Premiership
Putin was named one of the three first deputy prime ministers on August 9, 1999, and President Yeltsin designated him interim prime minister of the Government of the Russian Federation later that same day. Additionally, Yeltsin declared his desire for Putin to succeed him. Putin announced his intention to run for president later that day.
He became Russia’s fifth prime minister in less than eighteen months on August 16 when the State Duma confirmed his appointment as prime minister with 233 votes in favor (against 84 against, and 17 abstaining). A simple majority of 226 votes was needed. Few anticipated that Putin, who was essentially unknown to the public, would hold office for any longer than his predecessors when he was appointed. At first, he was thought to be a Yeltsin supporter; similar to past Yeltsin prime ministers, Putin did not select his own ministers; rather, the presidential administration chose the members of his cabinet.
Putin’s rise to prominence as a possible successor was fiercely resisted by Yeltsin’s principal rivals and prospective successors, who were already actively trying to unseat the ailing president. After the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999, Putin’s popularity increased and he was able to surpass his rivals thanks to his law-and-order image and unwavering approach to the Second Chechen War. The invasion of Dagestan by mujahideen, including former KGB agents, based in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
1999–2000: Acting Presidency
In accordance with the Russian Constitution, Putin assumed the role of Acting President of the Russian Federation on December 31, 1999, following Yeltsin’s abrupt resignation. Following his appointment to this position, Putin visited Russian troops in Chechnya as planned.
“On guarantees for the former president of the Russian Federation and the members of his family” was the title of the first presidential decree that Putin signed on December 26, 1999. That “corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives” would not be brought was secured by this. In The bribery case involving Yeltsin’s family members, Mabetex, was the main target of this. As a member of the Saint Petersburg city government, Putin was one of the subjects of a criminal inquiry (number 18/238278-95) on August 30, 2000.
After Swiss prosecutors provided hundreds of documents, the prosecutor general was the target of yet another case that was withdrawn on December 30, 2000, “for lack of evidence”. Putin signed a comparable federal statute on February 12, 2001, to supersede the 1999 decree. Marina Salye had brought back a case from 1992 about Putin’s suspected wrongdoing in metal exports, but she was silenced and expelled from Saint Petersburg.
2000–2004: First Presidential term
May 7, 2000, was President Putin’s inauguration. Mikhail Kasyanov, the minister of finance, was named prime minister by him. Putin faced criticism for allegedly mishandling the Kursk submarine accident in August 2000, which posed the first significant threat to his popularity. Putin’s return from vacation took several days, and it took several more days before he visited the scene, which was a major contributing factor in that criticism.
Putin began to rebuild the nation’s poor state between 2000 and 2004, seemingly emerging victorious in a power battle with the Russian billionaires and striking a “grand bargain” with them. Through this agreement, the oligarchs were able to keep the majority of their power while openly endorsing and aligning themselves with Putin’s administration.
October 2002 saw the hostage situation at the Moscow theater. Numerous people in the Russian and foreign media warned that President Putin’s popularity would suffer greatly as a result of the 130 hostages who died during the special forces’ crisis-related rescue mission. But soon after the siege ended, the Russian president saw unprecedented levels of public approval—83 percent of Russians said they were happy with Putin’s handling of the siege.
Chechnya held a referendum in 2003 and adopted a new constitution stating that the Republic of Chechnya is a part of Russia; nevertheless, the territory did gain autonomy. With the establishment of a regional government and parliamentary elections, Chechnya has gradually stabilized. Russia significantly suffered throughout the Second Chechen War.
2004–2008: Second Presidential term
With 71% of the vote, Putin was elected to the presidency for a second term on March 14, 2004. Between September 1, 2004, and September 3, 2004, more than 330 people—186 of them children—died during the Beslan school hostage crisis.
Russia saw turmoil for about ten years following the end of Soviet rule, just before Putin rose to power. In a 2005 speech at the Kremlin, Putin called the fall of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century. “Moreover, the disintegration epidemic infected Russia itself,” Putin clarified.[107] Prior to Putin’s takeover, the nation’s social safety net, which extended from birth to death, had disappeared and life expectancy had fallen.[108] The National Priority Projects were introduced in 2005 with the goal of enhancing Russia’s education, health care, and agriculture.
Two weeks after Russia cut off Germany’s oil supply, Putin hosted German Chancellor Angela Merkel at his Black Sea home in Sochi in January 2007. Merkel, who is known to be afraid of dogs, was clearly uncomfortable when Putin introduced his black Labrador, Konni, in front of her. Putin then said, “I’m sure it will behave itself,” which infuriated the German press corps. In an interview with Bild from January 2016, Putin said he had no idea she had a fear and added, “I wanted to make her happy.” Upon discovering that she was allergic to dogs, I immediately apologized.” Later, Merkel said to reporters, “I understand why he needs to do this – in order to prove He is a male. He is terrified of his own frailty. Russia lacks both a successful political system and an economy. This is all they have.
At Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov’s request, Putin dissolved the cabinet on September 12, 2007. According to Fradkov, the purpose was to allow the President a “free hand” ahead of the legislative election. In his place was named new prime minister Viktor Zubkov.
Preliminary election results show that in December 2007, United Russia, the ruling party that backs Putin’s policies, received 64.24% of the public vote in their bid for the State Duma. Many interpreted United Russia’s success in the December 2007 elections as proof of the public’s solid support for the policies of the then-Russian leadership.
Third presidential term of Vladimir Putin
Putin’s first year back in office as president was characterized by a largely successful effort to stifle the protest movement. Opposition leaders were jailed, and nongovernmental organizations that received funding from abroad were labeled as “foreign agents.” Tensions with the United States flared in June 2013, when U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden sought refuge in Russia after revealing the existence of a number of secret NSA programs. Snowden was allowed to remain in Russia on the condition that, in the words of Putin, he stop “bringing harm to our American partners.” After chemical weapons attacks outside Damascus in August 2013, the U.S. made the case for military intervention in the Syrian Civil War. In an editorial published in The New York Times, Putin urged restraint, and U.S. and Russian officials brokered a deal whereby Syria’s chemical weapons supply would be destroyed.
Putin commemorated the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the post-Soviet constitution in December 2013 by ordering the release of some 25,000 individuals from Russian prisons. In a separate move, he granted a pardon to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil conglomerate who had been imprisoned for more than a decade on charges that many outside Russia claimed were politically motivated.
The Ukraine Conflict and Syrian Intervention
In February 2014, when the government of Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown after months of sustained protests, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Refusing to recognize the interim government in Kyiv as legitimate, Putin requested parliamentary approval to dispatch troops to Ukraine to safeguard Russian interests. By early March 2014 Russian troops and pro-Russian paramilitary groups had effectively taken control of Crimea, a Ukrainian autonomous republic whose population was predominantly ethnic Russian. In a popular referendum held on March 16, residents of the Crimea voted to join Russia, and Western governments introduced a series of travel bans and asset freezes against members of Putin’s inner circle. On March 18 Putin, stating that the Crimea had always been part of Russia, signed a treaty incorporating the peninsula into the Russian Federation. Over subsequent days still more of Putin’s political allies were targeted with economic sanctions by the U.S. and the EU. After ratification of the treaty by both houses of the Russian parliament, on March 21 Putin signed legislation that formalized the Russian annexation of Crimea.
In April 2014, groups of unidentified gunmen outfitted with Russian equipment seized government buildings throughout southeastern Ukraine, sparking an armed conflict with the government in Kyiv. Putin referred to the region as Novorossiya (“New Russia”), evoking claims from the imperial era, and, although all signs pointed to direct Russian involvement in the insurgency, Putin steadfastly denied having a hand in the fighting. On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, carrying 298 people, crashed in eastern Ukraine, and overwhelming evidence indicated that it had been shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-controlled territory.
Western countries responded by tightening the sanctions regime, and those measures, combined with plummeting oil prices, sent the Russian economy into a tailspin. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) estimated that more than 1,000 Russian troops were actively fighting inside Ukraine when Russian and Ukrainian leaders met for cease-fire talks in Minsk, Belarus, on September 5. The cease-fire slowed, but did not stop, the violence, and pro-Russian rebels spent the next several months pushing back Ukrainian government forces.
On February 12, 2015, Putin met with other world leaders in Minsk to approve a 12-point peace plan aimed at ending the fighting in Ukraine. Although fighting slowed for a period, the conflict picked up again in the spring, and by September 2015 the United Nations (UN) estimated that some 8,000 people had been killed and 1.5 million had been displaced as a result of the fighting. On September 28, 2015, in an address before the UN General Assembly, Putin presented his vision of Russia as a world power, capable of projecting its influence abroad, while painting the United States and NATO as threats to global security. Two days later Russia became an active participant in the Syrian Civil War, when Russian aircraft struck targets near the cities of Homs and Hama. Although Russian defense officials stated that the air strikes were intended to target troops and matériel belonging to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the actual focus of the attacks seemed to have been on opponents of Syrian president and Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.
Silencing critics and actions in the West
On February 27, 2015, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down within sight of the Kremlin, just days after he had spoken out against Russian intervention in Ukraine. Nemtsov was only the latest Putin critic to be assassinated or to die under suspicious circumstances. In January 2016 a British public inquiry officially implicated Putin in the 2006 murder of former Federal Security Service (FSB; the successor to the KGB) officer Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, who had spoken out against Russian government ties to organized crime both before and after his defection to the United Kingdom, was poisoned with polonium-210 while drinking tea in a London hotel bar. Britain ordered the extradition of the two men accused of carrying out the assassination, but both denied involvement and one—Andrey Lugovoy—had since been elected to the Duma and enjoyed parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
Aleksey Navalny, an opposition activist who had first achieved prominence as a leader of the 2011 protest movement, was repeatedly imprisoned on what supporters characterized as politically motivated charges. Navalny finished second in the Moscow mayoral race in 2013, but his Progress Party was shut out of subsequent elections on procedural grounds. In the September 2016 legislative election, voter turnout was just 47.8 percent, the lowest since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Voter apathy was attributed to Putin’s steady implementation of so-called “managed democracy,” a system whereby the basic structures and procedures of democracy were maintained but the outcome of elections was largely predetermined. Putin’s United Russia party claimed victory, but election observers documented numerous irregularities, including instances of ballot stuffing and repeat voting. Navalny’s party was prohibited from fielding any candidates because of its registration status, and Nemtsov’s PARNAS received less than 1 percent of the vote.
By 2016 Putin’s involvement had shifted the balance in power in Syria, and evidence emerged that Russia was conducting a wide-ranging hybrid warfare campaign intended to undermine the power and legitimacy of Western democracies. Many of the attacks blurred the line between cyberwarfare and cybercrime, while others recalled the direct Soviet interventionism of the Cold War era. Russian fighter jets routinely violated NATO airspace in the Baltic, and a pair of sophisticated cyberattacks on the Ukrainian power grid plunged hundreds of thousands of people into darkness. Ukrainian Pres. Petro Poroshenko reported that his country had been subjected to more than 6,000 cyber intrusions over a two-month period, with virtually every sector of Ukrainian society being targeted. Poroshenko stated that Ukrainian investigators had linked the cyberwar campaign to Russian security services. In Montenegro, where the pro-Western government was preparing for accession to NATO, authorities narrowly averted a plot to assassinate Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Ðjukanović and install a pro-Russian government. Montenegrin prosecutors uncovered a conspiracy that linked nationalist Serbs, pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine, and, allegedly, a pair of Russian intelligence agents who had orchestrated the planned coup.
In the months prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a series of high-profile hacking attacks targeted the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Computer security experts tied these attacks to Russian intelligence services, and in July 2016 thousands of private e-mails were published by WikiLeaks. Within days the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a probe into Russian efforts to influence the presidential election. It was later revealed that this investigation was also examining possible connections between those efforts and the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump joked that Russia had released the hacked e-mails because “Putin likes me” and later invited Russia to “find [Clinton’s] 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” In spite of these statements, Trump repeatedly dismissed the possibility that Putin was attempting to sway the election in his favour.
After Trump’s stunning victory in November 2016, renewed attention was focused on the cyberattacks and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Putin had ordered a multipronged campaign to influence the election and undermine faith in American democratic systems. U.S. Pres. Barack Obama imposed economic sanctions on Russian intelligence services and expelled dozens of suspected Russian operatives, but President-elect Trump continued to reject the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies. Trump took office in January 2017 and additional investigations were opened by the U.S. Congress to examine the nature and extent of Russian meddling in the presidential election.
For his part, Putin denied the existence of any campaign to influence foreign elections. In May 2017, however, another cyberattack was attributed to Fancy Bear, the Russian government-linked group that had carried out the hack on the Democratic Party. France was holding the second round of its presidential election, and the finalists were centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen. Le Pen had previously received financial support from a bank that had ties to the Kremlin, and she vowed to push for the end of the sanctions regime that had been enacted after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Just hours before a media blackout on campaign-related news coverage went into effect, a massive trove of internal communications dubbed “MacronLeaks” surfaced on the Internet. This effort came to naught, as Macron captured nearly twice as many votes as Le Pen and became president of France.
Putin’s foreign moves appeared to produce significant dividends at home, as his popular approval rating consistently remained above 80 percent in spite of Russia’s sluggish economy and endemic government corruption. Low oil prices and Western sanctions compounded an already grim financial outlook as foreign investors remained reluctant to put their capital at risk in a land where personal ties to Putin were seen as more important than the rule of law. Even after Russia emerged from seven consecutive quarters of recession, both wages and consumer spending remained stagnant in 2017. These and other domestic problems seemed to do little to dent Putin’s image; among those expressing concern for such issues in opinion polls, blame was most often affixed to Putin’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.
Fourth presidential term
Salisbury Novichok Attack and Relationship with Trump
As the March 2018 presidential election approached, it seemed all but certain that Putin would win a fourth presidential term by a wide margin. Navalny, the face of the opposition, was barred from running, and the Communist candidate, Pavel Grudinin, faced incessant criticism from the state-run media. Two weeks before the election, Putin became the focus of a major international incident when Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for Britain only to be released to the United Kingdom as part of a prisoner swap, was found unconscious with his daughter in Salisbury, England. Investigators alleged that the pair had been exposed to a “novichok,” a complex nerve agent developed by the Soviets. British officials accused Putin of having ordered the attack, and British Prime Minister Theresa May expelled nearly two dozen Russian intelligence operatives who had been working in Britain under diplomatic cover.
The diplomatic row had not abated when Russians went to the polls on March 18, 2018. The date was, not coincidentally, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s forcible annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea, an event that marked a spike in Putin’s domestic popularity. As expected, Putin claimed an overwhelming majority of the vote in an election that independent monitoring agency Golos characterized as being rife with irregularities. Putin had wished for a higher turnout than in his 2012 election victory, and ballot stuffing was observed in numerous locations. Putin’s campaign characterized the result as an “incredible victory.
On July 16, 2018, fresh from the success of Russia’s well-received hosting of the World Cup football championship, Putin held a summit meeting in Helsinki with Trump. The two had conducted discussions at the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Hamburg, Germany, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Da Nang, Vietnam, in 2017, but the encounter in Finland marked their first formal one-on-one meeting. It came at the end of Trump’s trip to Europe in which he had ruffled relations with the United States’ traditional European allies. Although some observers questioned whether Trump would be able to hold his own in discussions with a counterpart as seasoned and cagey as Putin, Trump said that he thought his meeting with Putin would be the “easiest” of his trip.
After Putin kept Trump waiting by arriving late, the two met alone (with only translators present) for some two hours and then more briefly in the presence of advisers. In the press conference that followed, Putin once again denied any Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump then sent shock waves when, in response to a reporter’s question, he indicated that he trusted Putin’s denial more than the conclusions of his own intelligence organizations, which only days earlier had resulted in the U.S. Department of Justice’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents for their meddling in the election. Moreover, given the opportunity to condemn transgressive Russian actions, Trump instead cast blame on the United States for its strained relationship with Russia. Trump also warmed to Putin’s offer to allow U.S. investigators to interview the Russian agents in return for Russian access to Americans of interest in Russian investigations.
Asked by an American reporter if he had favoured Trump in the election, Putin said that he had, because of Trump’s expressed desire for better relations with Russia. When questioned about whether Russia had kompromat (compromising information) on Trump, Putin pointed to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and talked about the impossibility of obtaining compromising material on each of the more than 500 “high-ranking, high-level” American businessmen said to have attended the conference. He also said that he had been unaware of Trump’s presence in Moscow during an earlier visit. Some press accounts of his answer, however, pointed out that Putin did not explicitly deny having Trump-related kompromat. The Russian press trumpeted the summit as a huge success for Putin. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the outcome of the summit as “better than super.” The response in the United States was mostly shock, and a number of Republicans joined Democrats in strongly condemning Trump’s performance.
Constitutional change and the poisoning of Navalny
Although Russia remained something of a pariah on the global stage—its athletes were barred from international competition due to a massive state-sponsored doping scheme, it was suspended indefinitely from the G8, and it was the target of a raft of economic sanctions—Putin’s personal stature was undiminished. With Britain struggling to conclude an exit deal with the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the twilight of her tenure as de facto leader of Europe, and governments in Poland and Hungary exhibiting increasingly authoritarian practices, Putin faced a West that seemed unable to find its direction. Against this backdrop, he boasted of a robust expansion of Russian military power, particularly in the field of hypersonic weapons. Speaking about the historic arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, in December 2019 Putin remarked, “Today, we have a situation that is unique in modern history: they’re trying to catch up to us.”
In January 2020 Putin announced his intention to modify the Russian constitution in a way that would scrap term limits for presidents, paving the way for him to remain in office indefinitely. Medvedev promptly resigned as prime minister, stating that a new government would give Putin “the opportunity to make the decisions he needs to make.” The proposed constitutional changes were speedily approved by the Russian legislature, but Putin scheduled a national referendum on the matter, a move that critics described as little more than political theatre. That vote was originally scheduled for April, but it was postponed until July due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unsurprisingly, the result was an overwhelming affirmation of Putin’s agenda, but opposition groups noted that there was no independent monitoring of the election process.
On August 20 Navalny became seriously ill on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk, and tests later confirmed that he had been exposed to a novichok. Navalny was flown to Germany to recover, and the following month opposition candidates performed surprisingly well in local elections held in the area where Navalny had been campaigning. The Kremlin denied involvement in the poisoning, but such protestations had become increasingly implausible, as the attack on Navalny represented only the most recent in a long series of attempts on the lives of Putin’s critics.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine
In late 2021 Putin ordered a massive buildup of Russian forces along the Ukrainian border; additional units were dispatched to Belarus, ostensibly to engage in joint exercises with the Belarusian military. Western governments raised concerns about what appeared to be an imminent Russian invasion, but Putin denied that he had any such plans. By February 2022 as many as 190,000 Russian troops were poised to strike into Ukraine from forward bases in Russia, Russian-occupied Crimea, Belarus, and the Russian-backed separatist enclave of Transdniestria in Moldova. In addition, amphibious units were deployed to the Black Sea under the guise of previously scheduled naval exercises. On February 21 Putin recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, effectively voiding the 2015 Minsk peace agreement. In the early morning hours of February 24 Putin announced the beginning of a “special military operation,” and explosions could be heard in cities across Ukraine. Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country would defend itself, and Western leaders condemned the unprovoked attack, promising swift and severe sanctions against Russia.
Putin and his military advisers had assumed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would conclude in a matter of days with the toppling of the democratically elected government in Kyiv and the installation of a pro-Moscow regime. Almost from the outset, however, deficiencies in Russia’s military became apparent, and advances along numerous axes stalled in the face of determined Ukrainian resistance. Colossal logistical failures hampered the attack on Kyiv, and an attempted encirclement of Kharkiv faltered, despite that city’s close proximity (20 miles [32 km]) to the Russian border. By the end of March Russian troops had been driven back from Kyiv, and the following month Ukrainian forces sank the missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
In liberated areas there was widespread evidence of war crimes committed by Russian soldiers. Reports of looting and sexual violence were commonplace, and in cities such as Bucha, Izyum, and Kherson the bodies of hundreds of civilians were found piled in mass graves. In Mariupol as many as 600 people were killed when a Russian air strike targeted a theatre that had been serving as the city’s main bomb shelter. The building held no military value, and the word “CHILDREN” was painted on the pavement outside in massive Cyrillic letters that were visible in satellite imagery. As battlefield victories became more elusive and Ukraine began reclaiming territory, Russian commanders stepped up their attacks on civilian infrastructure in a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. When Russian troops finally captured Mariupol after a three-month siege, the port city had been reduced to a smoking ruin.
If Putin had hoped to divide the West and reassert Russia’s dominance in the “near abroad” countries of the former Soviet Union, the plan backfired spectacularly. On June 23 the European Union formally granted candidate status to Ukraine, thus completing a narrative arc that had begun with the overthrow of the pro-Russian Yanukovych government in 2014. NATO was energized by the clear threat to Europe’s collective security, and Finland and Sweden, two countries with a long history of neutrality, signed accession treaties to the alliance on July 5. Poland, which historically had a difficult relationship with its neighbour to the east, welcomed Ukrainian refugees by the millions. The United States sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, and Western leaders traveled to Kyiv to demonstrate their continued support for Zelensky and Ukraine. Putin, conversely, was increasingly isolated as Russia became the most heavily economically sanctioned country in history.
As his war effort foundered, Putin shuffled commanders and finally outsourced a portion of the fighting to Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenary company. Prigozhin filled Wagner’s ranks with inmates recruited from Russia’s prisons, and Prigozhin’s convict army was soon carrying out sanguinary attacks in the Donbas. Staggering losses from Ukrainian counteroffensives led Putin to declare a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 troops on September 21. Although defense officials had pledged that only combat veterans would be called up, there was widespread evidence that men with no military experience were being drafted. Protests erupted across Russia, and hundreds of thousands of military-age men fled the country.
Poorly equipped and given virtually no training, some of these conscripts were killed in action within two weeks of receiving their draft notices. Even Putin’s most enthusiastic supporters in state media voiced their disapproval of the partial mobilization, but doing so carried a very real risk. Putin had passed a law making criticism of the war effort a crime that carried a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, and officials and oligarchs who drew Putin’s ire often suffered suspicious deaths, with a wholly improbable number falling from windows. After a year of war, Russia’s international standing was greatly diminished, its economy was reeling from sanctions, and its leader appeared more vulnerable than at any previous time in his nearly quarter century in power.
Putin’s mobilization did little to change the military situation in Ukraine, and Russia’s winter and spring offensives went nowhere. Wagner forces intensified their focus on the city of Bakhmut in an effort to deliver some kind of victory for the Kremlin. For months, poorly equipped Wagner convict troops conducted bloody human wave attacks while trying to encircle Ukrainian forces, but Ukrainian defenses held. In May 2023 the Ukrainians withdrew from the ruins of Bakhmut, and Prigozhin declared victory; it was estimated that Russian casualties in the battle exceeded 100,000, with more than 20,000 killed in action. Still, it was Russia’s first battlefield success in nearly a year, and Prigozhin’s stock rose accordingly.
Putin’s whereabouts during the rebellion were subject to much speculation, as his presidential jet was tracked leaving Moscow while Prigozhin was still on the march. A spokesperson insisted that Putin was “working at the Kremlin,” but what is beyond dispute is that Putin kept a surprisingly low profile during one of the most tumultuous days in recent Russian history. His public statements, when they finally did come, appeared desperate and contradictory. He excoriated Prigozhin as a traitor, but Putin’s security services made no immediate move to apprehend him. He praised the Wagner fighters as patriots, despite the fact that the mercenaries had killed dozens of Russian service members during their advance on Moscow. Putin also lauded the Russian army for preventing “a civil war,” even though the regular Russian military appeared wholly unequipped to halt the rebellion.
Human Rights Policy
Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization based in New York City, claims that since Putin’s reelection in May 2012, Russia has implemented numerous restrictive laws, begun inspecting non-governmental organizations, harassed, intimidated, and imprisoned political activists, and begun to restrict critics in a report titled Laws of Attrition. The report was written by Hugh Williamson, the British director of HRW’s Europe & Central Asia Division. The “foreign agents” statute, which includes Russian human rights organizations that receive some international grant funding, is considered overly broad. Other new laws include the treason law and the assembly law, which penalize various forms of protest. Human rights advocates have condemned Russia for rising violence against LGBT+ persons and restricting the speech of LGBT campaigners because of “the gay propaganda law.
According to the Memorial Human Rights Center, as of June 2020, there were 380 political prisoners in Russia. Of these, 245 were prosecuted for their affiliation with one of the banned Muslim organizations in Russia, and 63 people were prosecuted either directly or indirectly for their political activities, including Alexey Navalny. Crimean residents make up 78 of the list’s total, or more than 20% of the total. By December 2022, over 4,000 individuals have faced legal action under Russia’s war censorship regulations for their criticism of the war in Ukraine.
Foreign Policy
Tensions between Putin and the west are common during his term. In her book published in 2022, Anna Borshchevskaya outlines Putin’s primary foreign policy goals, which stem from a document he published on the government website titled “Russia at the Turn of the Millenium” on December 30, 1999. Putin, as she portrays him, is adjusting to the idea that “Russia is a nation with distinctive values in danger of losing its unity—which… is a historic Russian fear.” This highlights once more the core problem with Russia’s identity issues and how the government has exploited them to promote security narratives that are anti-Western and intended to undermine the international order led by the US. Furthermore, a review of Russia’s troop posture under Putin throughout the years reveals a significant bias toward the south (Syria, Ukraine, Middle East), another
After examining Putin’s interview with the Financial Times, Leonid Bershidsky came to the following conclusion: “Putin has cooperated with and promoted people who are known to be gay. He is an imperialist of the old Soviet school, rather than a nationalist or a racist. Regarding foreign policy, Putin expressed support for artificial intelligence, saying that it represents “the future—not just for Russia, but for all of humanity.” It brings with it enormous potential as well as unpredictable threats. The world will be ruled by whoever rises to the top in this domain.
Asia
Putin stated, “The Declaration on Strategic Partnership between India and Russia signed in October 2000 became a truly historic step,” in an essay published in the Indian newspaper The Hindu in 2012. India continues to be Russia’s top buyer of military hardware, and the two nations have a long history of solid diplomatic and strategic ties. Putin referred to China and India as “close allies and partners” in October 2022.
Russia has had good relations with China, India, Pakistan, and the post-Soviet Central Asian states—the members of the BRICS and SCO—under Putin. Sino-Russian relations have greatly improved in the twenty-first century, both economically and bilaterally. The Treaty of Friendship, the building of the ESPO oil pipeline, and the Power of Siberia gas pipeline established a “special relationship” between the two great Powers.
Putin and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had numerous meetings to talk about the territorial conflicts between Japan and Russia. Additionally, Putin expressed his desire to build a rail bridge connecting the two nations. No deal was signed prior to Abe’s resignation in 2020, despite multiple meetings.
Putin has had cordial ties with its neighbor and has visited Mongolia three times. In September 2019, Putin and his counterpart from Mongolia inked a lasting friendship pact that will expand commerce and cultural relations between the two nations. In 2007, Putin visited Indonesia, becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to do so in fifty years, and a weapons deal was signed as a result.4443 Putin spoke on the camaraderie and long-standing relations between Russia and Indonesia during a different visit. In the 2010s, Russia provided military and economic support to Afghanistan, and it also improved ties with Vietnam after 2011. As Putin developed stronger bilateral relationships with his Filipino counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte, relations between Russia and the Philippines saw an uptick in 2016. Putin maintains cordial ties with Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia at the time. In July 2000, shortly after a trip to South Korea, Putin also became the first leader from Russia or the Soviet Union to visit Kim Jong-il in North Korea.
List of Awards and honours received by Vladimir Putin
Civilian awards presented by different countries
| 7 March 2001 | Vietnam |
| 6 January 2004 | Kazakhstan |
| 22 September 2006 | France |
| 6 October 2007 | Tajikistan |
| 12 February 2007 | Saudi Arabia |
| 10 September 2007 | UAE |
| 2 April 2010 | Venezuela |
| 14 March 2013 | Belarus |
| 4 October 2013 | Monaco |
| 11 July 2014 | Cuba |
| 16 October 2014 | Serbia |
| 28 September 2017 | Guinea |
| 3 October 2017 | Turkmenistan |
| 24 October 2017 | Cyprus |
| 22 November 2017 | Kyrgyzstan |
| 8 June 2018 | China |
| 4 April 2019 | Angola |
| 27 May 2019 | Kazakhstan |
| 8 January 2023 | Entity Republika Srpska |
Personal Life
Lyudmila Shkrebneva and Vladimir Putin were married on July 28, 1983, and they shared a home in East Germany from 1985 until 1990. Their two daughters, Yekaterina Putina (born August 31, 1986 in Dresden, East Germany) and Mariya Putina (born April 28, 1985 in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg), are their children.
Proekt’s study, which was released in November 2020, claimed that Putin and Svetlana Krivonogikh had another daughter, Elizaveta, also known as Luiza Rozova, who was born in March 2003.In The Russian politician and gold medallist Alina Kabaeva, a former rhythmic gymnast, was set to marry Putin, according to a report published in April 2008 by the Moskovsky Korrespondent. Putin had previously divorced Lyudmila.In Following the newspaper’s closure, the story was refuted. In Putin and Lyudmila kept showing up in public.
as husband and wife, yet rumors swirled about his relationship status with Kabaeva.
Putin and Lyudmila declared their divorce on June 6, 2013, and the Kremlin officially announced the divorce on April 1, 2014. It was alleged in 2015 that Kabaeva gave birth to a daughter by Putin; however, this report was refuted . Kabaeva supposedly gave birth to twin boys in 2019 that Putin arranged. But in 2022, the Swiss media reported—citing the couple’s Swiss gynecologist—that Kabaeva had given birth to a son on both occasions.
Through Maria, Putin has two grandsons, who were born in 2012 and 2017. Through Katerina, he supposedly also has a granddaughter who was born in 2017. Igor Putin, his cousin and a director of the Moscow-based Master Bank, was charged with in several cases of money laundering.
Vladirmir Wife lyudmila Putina
Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya is the former wife of Vladimir Putin, who is the current president and former prime minister of Russia. Lyudmila was born in Kaliningrad, Soviet Union, the daughter of Alexander (his patronymic is reported variously as either Abramovich or Avramovich) Shkrebnev and Yekaterina Tikhonovna Shkrebneva. Her father worked at Kaliningrad Mechanical Plant.
After the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine
As the number of civilian deaths from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine increased, U.S. President Joe Biden denounced Putin as a “murderous dictator” and a war criminal. Biden stated that Putin had “badly miscalculated” in the 2022 State of the Union Address. Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian representative to the UN, compared Putin to Adolf Hitler. The prime minister of Latvia, Krisjanis Karins, also compared the Russian president to Adolf Hitler, calling him “a deluded autocrat creating misery for millions” and stating that “Putin is fighting against democracy (…) If he can attack Ukraine, theoretically it could be any other European country”.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, declared: “The war for Ukraine is a war for Europe. Putin will go farther if he is not stopped there. Putin, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, was “deluding himself”. He was called “a cynic and a dictator” by Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister of France. Putin was also called a “dictator” by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said that Putin had approved “a tidal wave of violence against a fellow Slavic people”. Putin has been labeled as a “messianic” Russian nationalist and Eurasianist by several writers, including Michael Hirsh.
President Putin addressed a group of soldiers and other members of the Russian armed forces during his New Year’s speech on December 31, 2022. Whether or not these were real soldiers or actresses was questioned. At least five of the attendees in the New Year’s speech were recognized by the BBC using facial recognition technology as Putin’s allies or staff rather than active military personnel. Larisa Sergukhina, a member of the United Russia party in the regional parliament for the Novgorod area, is the blonde woman pictured standing behind Putin. In addition, Ms. Sergukhina has portrayed members of a church congregation, soldiers, and sailors in previous public visits by President Putin.
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