Vladimir Putin

President of Russia

• Born: October 7, 1952
• Place of Birth: Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia)

When Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia in December 1999, he was a largely unknown former Soviet intelligence officer. As President Boris Yeltsin's heir apparent, Putin went on to win the 2000 presidential election by an overwhelming margin, and was re-elected in 2004. During his first eight-year reign as Russia's head of state, Putin took drastic steps to increase the republic's control over its many provinces, to strengthen its military, to fight corruption, and to ensure the continued improvement of its once-ailing economy. He also made strides toward developing stronger ties to the West, including gaining a role in NATO discussions and supporting the United States and its war on terrorism. Upon being forced to step down from the presidency in 2008 due to term limits, Putin was reappointed prime minister by his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. He was then elected president for a third term in 2012, as the presidential term limit only applied to consecutive terms. He was elected to a fourth term in 2018, during which he approved constitutional changes that would allow him to run for re-election two more times and potentially remain in power through 2036. In 2022, Putin ordered and oversaw the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the war progressed, Putin turned increasingly authoritarian and cracked down on domestic opponents. He was re-elected to a fifth term in 2024.

Early Life and KGB Service

When Vladimir Putin was appointed interim president of Russia on New Year's Eve of 2000, he vaulted from relative obscurity to the federation's highest political post. During his first two terms as president, Putin was considered an enigmatic figure on the world political scene. While he presided over a stable period of economic growth and national confidence, opposition leaders and Western officials were critical of his commitment to civil liberties. He remained a controversial figure following his elections to a third and fourth term in 2012 and 2018, respectively, with criticism of Putin intensifying following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin was born in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1952 and came of age during the conservative rule of Leonid Brezhnev. Putin's father held Communist Party membership and was a foreman in a metal factory; he was wounded fighting against Nazi Germany on the Eastern front during War World II (1939–1945), but survived. Putin's mother nearly starved to death during the nine-hundred-day Nazi siege of Leningrad.

By his own admission, Putin as a young man was more a hooligan than a model Soviet youth. A passion for sambo, a Russian form of judo, gave him discipline, as did his discovery of Russia’s Committee for State Security, more commonly known as the KGB, its Russian abbreviation. Having seen films glorifying the role of Soviet spies during the war, Putin became interested in joining the organization. He inquired at KGB offices while still a high school student and was told that he would need military training or higher education, preferably in law.

The KGB recruited Putin when he was in his fourth year at Leningrad University. He graduated with a law degree in 1975 and joined the KGB's Foreign Intelligence Service the same year. He married Lyudmila Shkrebneva in 1983. His primary posting for the KGB was in Dresden, East Germany, which he took up in 1985 and where his two daughters were born.

Putin's career as a KGB operative in Dresden was largely undistinguished. Unlike Berlin, for example, Dresden was considered a third-rate posting. He was responsible for carrying out routine work that bore no resemblance to the films that inspired him in his youth. He spent the majority of his time obtaining and analyzing information about the changing political landscape of the region and sending it to Moscow. The most notable event of his time abroad came in 1989, with the dissolution of communism in East Germany. When Moscow failed to respond immediately to the crisis, Putin knew that the Soviet empire was seriously ailing. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the same year that Putin retired from the KGB with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Back in Saint Petersburg, Putin went to work in the city hall under the first democratically elected mayor, the liberal Anatoly Sobchak, who made Putin his deputy in 1994. He resigned from the position two years later when Sobchak failed to be reelected, but not before his work was noticed by an aide to Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation. Brought to Moscow, Putin soon demonstrated his loyalty to Yeltsin and was appointed head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, in 1998.

Path to the Presidency

The nine years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Yeltsin's presidency were marked by unprecedented freedoms and disorganization. With the backing of super-rich Russian tycoons known as the oligarchs, Yeltsin was reelected to office in 1996, winning over the only notable opposition, the Communist Party. Flagging popularity, acute economic problems, and charges of corruption, however, dominated Yeltsin's second term in office.

It was against this background that Putin made a meteoric rise in national politics. Yeltsin appointed him prime minister in August 1999. Many commentators doubted that the unknown Putin would last in this position, since Yeltsin had fired four previous prime ministers in just seventeen months. Yet on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin named him his favored successor. Putin served as acting president until elections were held in March 2000. He won with 53 percent of the vote. It was his first experience with elected office.

Putin campaigned on a platform that inspired confidence in many Russians. He vowed to restore order, rein in the breakaway republics in the southern part of the country, curtail the power of regional leaders and the oligarchs, and reform the security services. During his time as prime minister and acting president, then during his first term, Putin made headway in each of these areas with mixed success and further established his popularity among large portions of the population.

Putin inherited a number of problems from Yeltsin's two terms in office. The first of these was the Chechen struggle for autonomy on Russia's southwestern border. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government considered Chechnya a breakaway republic, and Yeltsin had ordered several major offensives meant to subdue rebel forces. In 1999, with Putin as prime minister, a series of bombings struck apartments in Moscow and other cities.

Though Chechen militants denied involvement, the bombings were used to justify a renewal of the effort to combat terrorism. This justification was granted more validity after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Meanwhile, independent observers harshly criticized Russian forces for flagrant human rights violations in Chechnya. In 2002, Chechen rebels took over eight hundred people hostage in a Moscow theater, demanding an end to the war. Nearly two hundred people died when the theater was stormed by Russian forces. Despite international criticism of Russian military efforts in the Chechnya region, Putin chose not to yield.

A second problem was the so-called oligarchs, businessmen who took advantage of the post-Soviet chaos to buy up rights to Russia's vast natural resources as these state assets were being privatized. Many of their deals were unscrupulous and illegal, and the number of billionaires in Russia quickly grew. While Yeltsin had used the oligarchs to secure his political future, it is widely rumored that Putin struck a different deal with them: they would not engage in politics, and he would not have them prosecuted for their shady business tactics. Several billionaires, such as Boris Berezhovsky, decided to fund political opposition to Putin and were forced into exile abroad. In a highly publicized trial, oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud and tax evasion.

Controversy and Second Term

While Putin still enjoyed a high approval rating entering his second term, his administration was marred by several controversies.

In August 2000, a nuclear submarine, the Kursk, sunk in the Barents Sea, killing 118 sailors. Putin was slow to initiate a rescue attempt, and at first he refused assistance from foreign countries—including the United States. The Kursk disaster drew attention to Russia's underfunded navy and raised questions about the safety of its nuclear armaments.

Political issues related to oil-rich oligarchs continued to plague the Putin administration. The case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky caused an international spectacle. Once the sixteenth-wealthiest man in the world and former head of the Russian oil company Yukos, he was arrested in October 2003 and charged with tax evasion. Yukos's shares were then frozen by the government. After a contentious trial, Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison. Putin insisted that the case was based on the rule of law and that the sentence was not a vendetta against Khodorkovsky for his funding of the political opposition.

Many critics were skeptical of Putin's intentions and the long-term effects that the case might have on the economy and the confidence of foreign investors, which Russia is heavily dependent upon. Others, particularly those who have not benefited from the post-Soviet economic improvements, believe that the oligarchs must be brought to justice.

Throughout his first years as president, Putin continually cracked down on independent media in Russia. One result was the concentration of press and television in the hands of Kremlin-backed institutions that provide uncritical perspectives on the government. Journalists investigating controversial domestic issues such as the Chechen conflict lost their jobs and received anonymous threats. It is widely believed that journalists Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko were assassinated for being publicly critical of the Putin administration. Meanwhile, the Chechen conflict continued with terrorist attacks in Moscow and fresh offensives by Russian forces.

Putin's crackdown also helped stifle political opposition. This was particularly obvious during the lead-up to the 2004 election, in which Putin won another four-year term with 72 percent of the vote. In the months before the March election, independent observers noted the media failed to report any substantial coverage to the opposition parties. They also faulted Putin for the misuse of governmental resources during his campaign and alleged instances of ballot stuffing on election day.

Dmitry Medvedev was selected by Putin as his successor in early 2008. However, Russian government officials refused to allow international observers to witness the 2008 election, accusing them of prying and being insensitive to state regulations. Although opposition parties were allowed to enter candidates on the ballot, political observers complained that the Kremlin had more or less removed them from the electoral process.

Shortly after nominating Medvedev, Putin announced that he would remain in the government of the new president, serving in the post of prime minister. He served as prime minister for four years. During Medvedev's presidency, in 2009, the counterterrorism operation in Chechnya was officially concluded, though violence continued in the North Caucasus.

Third Term and the Ukrainian Conflict

Putin ran for a third term as president in 2012. Although he was elected with 63.6 percent of the vote, opposition leaders criticized the election as unfair. Widespread demonstrations took place in Moscow after Putin was sworn in as president on May 7, 2012. Medvedev returned to the role of prime minister. Upon returning to office as president, Putin outlined his plans to make improvements to the Russian economy. In what was seen as a response to US criticism of the 2012 Russian elections, Putin chose not to attend a Group of Eight (G8) summit hosted by US president Barack Obama in May 2012.

Following the Ukrainian revolution in early 2014 that had sent the country's president into exile, Putin received parliamentary approval to send Russian troops into Ukraine. Eventually, the Russian forces annexed the Crimea region and helped arm the separatists. These deliberately hostile actions against the sovereign Ukraine prompted strict sanctions by the United States and the European Union, weakening Russia's economy. Putin defended Russia's actions, claiming that these efforts served to restore what was historically an important part of Russia. Despite an increasingly failing economy, Putin, still recalling the shame of the fall of the Soviet Union, has continued to stand up for his country and proclaim its strength even in the face of Western condemnation. His approval ratings rose significantly in the wake of this aggressive move.

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolved that Russia's annexation of Crimea was illegal in 2014. Conflict continued in Ukraine throughout 2015. In February 2015, at a summit in Minsk, Belarus, referred to as the Minsk II summit, Putin participated in talks with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, mediated by the leaders of France and Germany, that resulted in a cease-fire agreement. Putin agreed to return control of Ukraine's eastern border to its government. Neither Russia nor Ukraine had implemented their part of the agreement by the end of the year, and the agreement was extended into 2016. At the end of 2015, Crimea was left in limbo, cut off from Ukraine but not fully integrated into Russia and left without consistent access to gasoline or electricity. As of September 2017, Putin was still providing military and weapons support to separatist groups, in direct opposition to at least one of the terms of the Minsk II accord. The United States had renewed the sanctions against Russia the previous month, and at the 2017 Yalta European Strategy (YES) summit in September, Poroshenko maintained that "sanctions against Russia must be in force until full implementation of the Minsk agreements and restoring the sovereignty of Ukraine over Crimea and Donbas [a region of eastern Ukraine]," according to Kim Sengupta for the Independent.

In March 2017, it was announced that Ukraine had filed a suit against Russia with the United Nation's International Court of Justice. In addition to asking for reparations related to the people killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a missile that later investigations found came from Ukraine territory controlled by Russia-backed rebels, Ukraine's deputy foreign minister announced that they were also asking the court to demand that Russia discontinue financing the separatists and sending them arms as these actions are in direct conflict with international laws. Furthermore, Ukraine accused Russia of racial discrimination against non-Russians in Crimea that also violates these treaties.

Russia's Role in the Syrian Conflict

Russia has long considered Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to be an ally. In September 2015, after Putin presented a plan to the UN Security Council for an international, antiterrorism coalition, Russia entered the conflict of the Syrian Civil War in support of Assad. This marked the first occasion that the Russian Federation had participated in conflict outside of the former Soviet Union since its formation. Russian support has consisted primarily of air strikes, and according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Russian air strikes were responsible for over four thousand deaths in Syria between September 2015 and early March 2016. The air strikes helped to create a buffer between land held by Assad and by rebel forces in western Syria. In March 2016, Putin abruptly announced that he was pulling the majority of Russian troops out of Syria and explained that he felt that the Russian military intervention had achieved its purpose. He also said that the Russian airbase in the coastal province of Latakia as well as a naval facility in the port of Tartous would continue to operate and would be quickly re-equipped if necessary.

Upon his election as president of the United States in 2016, Donald Trump stated that he would support US cooperation with Russia in coordinated operations against a common enemy, the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in Syria.

Scandals Involving Athletic Doping and US Hacking

Beginning in 2016, Putin and his country drew further international criticism over Russia's policies regarding athletic integrity and possible intervention in other countries' governmental affairs. Though Putin vehemently denied it, an investigation conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics found that in previous competitions over several years, many Russian atheletes' urine samples had been systematically replaced with clean samples to ensure that they would pass tests for the use of illegal substances, leading to a major doping scandal for Russia. A more detailed report released later that year emphasized that this process of cheating was supported by officials as high up as the Russian government, and commentators often implicated Putin as having condoned it. While Putin released a statement in early 2017 acknowledging that Russia's anti-doping system is greatly flawed, he had not changed his position on whether the government had sanctioned athletes' large-scale doping.

Additionally, in December 2016, following Trump's election as president of the United States, accusations from intelligence officials began to surface in the media that Russia had likely been responsible for the recently uncovered hacking of the Democratic National Committee during the election. Trump, who had advocated for cooperation with Russia during his campaign, indicated that it could be too early to tell whether Russia was definitively the culprit behind the hacking. In response, President Obama, before leaving office, issued an executive order that placed sanctions on specific Russian intelligence agencies and ordered more than thirty Russian diplomats out of the country. In January 2017, an official report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that evidence strongly shows that the cyberattack must have been ordered by the government and Putin himself, claiming that he had a direct interest and involvement in influencing the election results in Trump's favor. The Russian government continuously denied any role in the cyberattacks.

Fourth Term and Invasion of Ukraine

Putin was elected to a fourth term as president in March 2018 with a reported 76 percent of the vote. Several months later, he met with Trump in Helsinki, Finland, before meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in April 2019. Putin showed support for Kim in his denuclearization negotiation with the US. In January 2020, he announced proposals for several constitutional amendments, including amendments to restrict the presidency to two terms and that transfers the power to appoint the prime minister and cabinet minister from the president to the parliament. After a vote was held nationwide in July 2020 pertaining to these constitutional amendments, which some international critics argued was largely superficial as the changes had already been legislatively approved, it was reported that 78 percent of voters supported the reforms. As part of the package of changes, the presidency was limited to two terms, but any previous terms served would not be counted, allowing Putin to run for the office at the end of his fourth term in 2024, and again in 2030.

In the meantime, Putin, along with other world leaders, continued to be scrutinized for his overseeing of Russia's response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that had begun in early 2020. Another issue that Putin and his administration faced by early 2021 was the increased popularity of outspoken critic and opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Mass protests took place after he returned to Russia in January 2021 following recuperation from a poisoning that he cited Putin as having orchestrated, but was immediately imprisoned.

Meanwhile, the crisis in Ukraine continued, as pro-Russian separatists continued fighting against Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of the country. In November 2021, reports emerged that Russia had begun to mass tens of thousands of soldiers and large amounts of heavy military equipment on its border with Ukraine, prompting fears that Putin planned to order an invasion. While the US and its European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a collective security alliance formed during the Cold War, attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the crisis, Putin continued to press for a series of concessions, including a promise that Ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO; the US and NATO rejected many of Putin's demands outright.

On February 21 Putin gave a televised speech recognizing the independence of the two self-proclaimed, pro-Russian republics in eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. Three days later, on February 24, he ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine and warned other countries of severe consequences if they intervened. Despite these warnings, US president Joe Biden and multiple European leaders issued harsh new sanctions against Russia almost immediately after the invasion began.

The invasion led to a crackdown on dissent in Russia. Putin's government enacted Russia's strictest censorship laws since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the closure or suspension of much of Russia's independent media. A new law, which Putin signed on March 4, 2022, made "publishing false information" about the Russian military's actions in Ukraine punishable by up to fifteen years in prison. Despite this increasing repression, large protests against the invasion occurred across Russia and nearly 15,000 people were arrested between February and May.

The Russian military made some significant gains early in the war, taking over parts of Ukrainian territory and inflicting heavy damage on many Ukrainian cities with artillery and air strikes, some of which allegedly deliberately targeted civilian areas. These bombings, along with actions by the Russian military around this time, including the Bucha massacre, during which Russian forces murdered hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha, a small city in Kyiv Oblast, were described by legal experts as war crimes. Some international leaders, including Biden, to refer to Putin himself as a war criminal.

Despite Russia's initial success in the first days of the invasion, Ukraine was able to mount and a successful defense for much of 2022. Throughout April and May, the Ukrainian military was able to inflict heavy casualties and push the Russians back from many key cities, including Kyiv and Kharkiv. By that point Putin, who many experts felt had expected a swift conclusion to the war, was reported as being frustrated with the invasion's slow progress, and dismissed some individuals from posts in his government. In September 2022, as a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced the Russian military to retreat along many sections of the front lines, Putin enacted a military draft when he ordered a partial mobilization of Russian military reservists. This move proved unpopular among many in Russia; a new wave of protests began in many cities across the country, and within weeks of this order, an estimated 261,000 Russian men of military service age had fled the country.

On October 5, 2022, in an attempt to assert Russian control over certain parts of Ukraine, Putin signed four laws formally annexing four Ukrainian oblasts—Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Many other countries criticized this move as an illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory; additionally, some of this annexed territory remained under the control of the Ukrainian military, which Putin admitted had successfully forced Russian units in these territories to "regroup." While exact data remained hard to verify at that point in the conflict, Russian forces had suffered tens of thousands of casualties by October 2022, along with heavy losses of tanks, helicopters, and other equipment.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin's arrest and cited the Russian military's abduction and "re-education" of Ukrainian children as the reason behind the arrest. The warrant placed travel restrictions on Putin, who could not visit certain countries outside Russia. Shortly after the court issued the warrant for his arrest, Putin met with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Moscow to discuss cooperation tactics between Russia and China.

In June 2023, the private Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group launched an armed rebellion against Putin and the Russian government. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the organization, led his mercenaries in a march toward Moscow in the early morning on June 24 and soon claimed control of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. That evening, Prigozhin halted the rebellion's march to Moscow and ordered his forces to retreat. The insurrection became one of the most prominent challenges to Putin's leadership and the Russian government in decades. Just three days after the rebellion, the Russian Federal Security Service ceased its criminal investigation into Prigozhin. Two months later, in August 2023, the Russian Investigative Committee confirmed Prigozhin's death after a plane crashed in the Tver region of Russia, with Prigozhin on board the flight.

On July 27–28, 2023, several heads of African states gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend Putin's second annual economic and humanitarian summit for African countries following the first summit in 2019. African leaders, who cited concerns over the war's negative effects on their respective countries, urged Putin to cease the Russian conflict with Ukraine and offered a plan for peace. Several African delegates, including Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, voiced specific concerns over Russia's decision on July 17, 2023, to exit the Black Sea grain deal, which permitted the safe export of grain from Ukrainian seaports during the war. Shortly after the deal's termination, global wheat futures skyrocketed by an estimated 9 percent price increase. Putin reassured African delegates at the summit that Russia would continue to act as a reliable source of agricultural exports and pledged to provide between twenty-five thousand and fifty thousand tons of free grain to the six affected countries—Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea, and Central African Republic—for up to four months as compensation for the decision to exit the deal. Putin remained defensive of Russia's stance in its conflict with Ukraine; however, he acknowledged Africa as an emerging power on the world stage and agreed to examine the peace proposal.

On February 16, 2024, Alexei Navalny, a prominent opponent of Putin's leadership, died at age forty-seven in a Russian prison near the Arctic Circle, where he was serving a nineteen-year sentence on charges including extremism and fraud. Opposition activists and several Western officials accused Putin and the Russian government of being involved in the circumstances of Navalny's death, which spurred outrage throughout the Western world; thousands of protesters gathered outside Russian embassies throughout several major European cities, while other mourners held informal vigils to express their distress. Putin remained silent in his response to Navalny's death, while Russian authorities, including spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, warned Russian citizens against unauthorized memorial services for Navalny, which the government would treat as a violation of the law. Thousands of mourners risked arrest and gathered for Navalny's funeral services in Moscow on March 1, 2024, which marked a striking display of defiance against Putin's leadership and the Kremlin.

By the beginning of 2024, the combined estimate of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded in the war climbed to the hundreds of thousands, with US officials estimating a combined total of nearly half a million Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded by August 2023. On February 17, 2024, Russian troops captured the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, an event that signaled the first significant advantage gained by Russian forces in their war efforts since early 2023 and marked one of the most destructive battles of the conflict up to that point. The Russian occupation of Avdiivka came just one month after the seizure of the Ukrainian town of Marinka in January 2024.

Fifth Term

In March 2024, Putin was re-elected to a fifth term as Russia's president with more than 87 percent of the vote. Other nations including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States were not surprised by the landslide, but said the election had not been free or fair, however, due to Putin's violent repression of freedom of speech and freedom of press, which had silenced those who opposed his war with Ukraine and authoritarian rule. His fifth term began in May 2024.

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