Background

Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952 in Leningrad during the Soviet Union. His birth was preceded by the death of two brothers, Viktor and Albert, born in the mid-1930s. Albert died in infancy and Viktor died of diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II.

Vladimir Putin’s mother, Maria Shelomova, was a factory worker. She was a very kind, benevolent person.

His father, Vladimir Putin, participated in the war. In the 1950s, he worked as a security guard and later as a foreman at the carriage works.

Education

He wished to emulate the intelligence officers portrayed in Soviet cinema. At age 12, he began to practice sambo and judo. He is a Judo black belt and national master of sports in Sambo. His mother did not approve of his decision to do judo. Things changed after Vladimir Putin’s coach visited his home and told his parents about what he did and what he achieved; the family’s attitude toward this sport changed.

In 1960-1968, Vladimir Putin attended Primary School No. 193 in Leningrad.

After the eighth grade, he entered High School No. 281, a chemistry-focused magnet school under the aegis of a technology institute, studied German, completing his studies there in 1970.

He studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975.

In 1975, Putin joined the KGB and trained at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad.

Career

After training, he worked in the Second Chief Directorate (counter-intelligence), before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where he monitored foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad. From 1985 to 1990, he served in Dresden, East Germany, using a cover identity as a translator.

Putin was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before resigning in 1991 to enter politics in Saint Petersburg.

Upon returning to Russia, Putin held an administrative position at the University of Leningrad, and after the fall of communism in 1991 became an adviser to liberal politician Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak was elected mayor of Leningrad later that year, Putin became his head of external relations, and by 1994, Putin had become Sobchak's first deputy mayor.

After Sobchak's defeat in 1996, Putin resigned his post and moved to Moscow.

Shortly afterward, Putin was appointed head of the Federal Security Service, an arm of the former KGB, as well as head of Yeltsin's Security Council. In August 1999, Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister, Sergey Stapashin, along with his cabinet, and promoted Putin in his place.

In December 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of Russia and appointed Putin acting president until official elections were held, and in March 2000, Putin was elected to his first term with 53 percent of the vote. Promising both political and economic reforms, Putin set about restructuring the government and launching criminal investigations into the business dealings of high-profile Russian citizens. He also continued Russia's military campaign in Chechnya.

The first major challenge to Putin's popularity came in August 2000, when he was criticized for the alleged mishandling of the Kursk submarine disaster. That criticism was largely because it was several days before Putin returned from vacation, and several more before he visited the scene.

Between 2000 and 2004, Putin set about the reconstruction of the impoverished condition of the country, apparently winning a power-struggle with the Russian oligarchs, reaching a 'grand bargain' with them. This bargain allowed the oligarchs to maintain most of their powers, in exchange for their explicit support for—and alignment with—Putin's government.

In 2003, a referendum was held in Chechnya, adopting a new constitution which declares that the Republic of Chechnya is a part of Russia; on the other hand, the region did acquire autonomy. Chechnya has been gradually stabilized with the establishment of the Parliamentary elections and a Regional Government. Throughout the Second Chechen War, Russia severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement; however, sporadic attacks by rebels continued to occur throughout the northern Caucasus.

In 2004, Putin was re-elected to the presidency, and in April of the following year made a historic visit to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—marking the first visit to Israel by any Kremlin leader.

Due to constitutional term limits, Putin was prevented from running for the presidency in 2008. (That same year, presidential terms in Russia were extended from four to six years.) However, when his protégé Dmitry Medvedev succeeded him as president in March 2008, he immediately appointed Putin as Russia's prime minister, allowing Putin to maintain a primary position of influence for the next four years.

On March 4, 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected to his third term as president. After widespread protests and allegations of electoral fraud, he was inaugurated on May 7, 2012, and shortly after taking office appointed Medvedev as prime minister. Once more at the helm, Putin has continued to make controversial changes to Russia's domestic affairs and foreign policy.

In December 2017, Putin reported at his annual end-of-year press conference that he would seek a new six-year term as president in early 2018 as an independent candidate, signaling he was ending his longtime association with the United Russia party.

Putin won the 2018 presidential election with more than 76% of the vote. His fourth term began on 7 May 2018. On the same day, Putin invited Dmitry Medvedev to form a new government.

On 18 May 2018, Vladimir Putin signed decrees on the composition of the new Government.

On 25 May 2018, Putin announced that he would not run for president in 2024, justifying this in compliance with the Russian Constitution.

Achievements

• 

  Under the Putin administration from 2001 to 2007, the economy made real gains of an average 7% per year, making it the 7th largest economy in the world in purchasing power. In 2007, Russia's GDP exceeded that of Russian SFSR in 1990, having recovered from the 1998 financial crisis and the preceding recession in the 1990s.
  
  During Putin's first eight years in office, the industry grew substantially, as did production, construction, real incomes, credit, and the middle class.
  
  Putin has also been praised for eliminating widespread barter and thus boosting the economy. A fund for oil revenue allowed Russia to repay all of the Soviet Union's debts by 2005. Under Putin, Russia became a major exporter of oil and gas to much of Europe. In 2007, he was the Time Person of the Year.
  
  Control over the economy was increased by placing individuals from the intelligence services and the military, in key positions of the Russian economy, including on boards of large companies. In 2005 an industry consolidation programme was launched to bring the main aircraft producing companies under a single umbrella organization, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). The aim was to optimize production lines and minimize losses. The UAC is one of the so-called national champions and comparable to EADS in Europe.
  
  A programme was started to increase Russia's share of the European energy market by building submerged gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine and other countries which were often seen as non-reliable transit partners by Russia, especially following Russia-Ukraine gas disputes of the late 2000s (decade). Russia also undermined the rival pipeline project Nabucco by buying the Turkmen gas and redirecting it into Russian pipelines.
  
  Russia diversified its export markets by building the Trans-Siberian oil pipeline to the markets of China, Japan, and Korea, as well as the Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok gas pipeline in the Russian Far E. Russia has also recently built several major oil and gas refineries, plants and ports. Construction of major hydropower plants, such as the Bureya Dam and the Boguchany Dam, as well as the restoration of the nuclear industry of Russia, with 1 trillion rubles ($42.7 billion) were allocated from the federal budget to nuclear power and industry development before 2015.
  
  A large number of nuclear power stations and units are currently being constructed by the state corporation Rosatom in Russia and abroad.
  
  In 2012, Putin was honored in Bethlehem and a street was named after him.
  
  In 2015, he was No. 1 on the Time's Most Influential People List. Forbes ranked him the World's Most Powerful Individual every year from 2013 to 2016.
  
  The Arctic policy of Russia also includes an offshore oilfield in the Pechora Sea is expected to start producing in early 2012, with the world's first ice-resistant oil platform and first offshore Arctic platform.
  
  The construction of a pipeline at a cost of $77bn, to be jointly funded by Russia and China, was signed off on by President Putin in Shanghai on 21 May 2014. On completion in 4 to 6 years, the pipeline would deliver natural gas from the state-majority-owned Gazprom to China's state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation for the next 30 years, in a deal worth $400bn.
  
  Putin's name and image are widely used in advertisement and product branding. Among the Putin-branded products are Putinka vodka, the Putin brand of canned food, the Gorbusha Putina caviar and a collection of T-shirts with his image.

Works

More photos

• book

  • First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President

    (Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly ...)

• Other Work

  • Judo: History, Theory, Practice

    (Authors Vladimir Putin, Vasily Shestakov, and Alexy Levit...)

Religion

Putin is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother was a devoted Christian believer who attended the Russian Orthodox Church, while his father was an atheist. Though his mother kept no icons at home, she attended church regularly, despite government persecution of her religion at that time. His mother secretly baptized him as a baby, and she regularly took him to services.

According to Putin, his religious awakening began after a serious car crash involving his wife in 1993, and a life-threatening fire that burned down their dacha in August 1996. Shortly before an official visit to Israel, Putin's mother gave him his baptismal cross, telling him to get it blessed. Putin states, "I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since." When asked in 2007 whether he believes in God, he responded, "... There are things I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease." Putin's rumoured confessor is Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov.

The vast construction and restoration of churches, started in the 1990s, continued under Putin, and the state allowed the teaching of religion in schools (parents are provided with a choice for their children to learn the basics of one of the traditional religions or secular ethics). His approach to religious policy has been characterized as one of support for religious freedoms, but also the attempt to unify different religions under the authority of the state.

Politics

In 1999, Putin described communism as "a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization."

Putin's domestic policies, particularly early in his first presidency, were aimed at creating a vertical power structure. On 13 May 2000, he issued a decree putting the 89 federal subjects of Russia into seven administrative federal districts and appointed a presidential envoy responsible for each of those districts (whose official title is Plenipotentiary Representative).

On 13 May 2000, Putin introduced seven federal districts for administrative purposes. On 19 January 2010, the 8th North Caucasus Federal District (shown here in purple) was split from Southern Federal District. On 21 March 2014, the new 9th Crimean Federal District was formed after the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation, but on 28 July 2016, it was incorporated into Southern Federal District.

According to Stephen White, under the presidency of Putin Russia made it clear that it had no intention of establishing a "second edition" of the American or British political system, but rather a system that was closer to Russia's own traditions and circumstances. Some commentators have described Putin's administration as a "sovereign democracy".

According to the proponents of that description, the government's actions and policies ought above all to enjoy popular support within Russia itself and not be directed or influenced from outside the country.

In July 2000, according to a law proposed by Putin and approved by the Federal Assembly of Russia, Putin gained the right to dismiss the heads of the 89 federal subjects. In 2004, the direct election of those heads (usually called "governors") by popular vote was replaced with a system whereby they would be nominated by the president and approved or disapproved by regional legislatures. This was seen by Putin as a necessary move to stop separatist tendencies and get rid of those governors who were connected with organised crime.

This and other government actions effected under Putin's presidency have been criticised by many independent Russian media outlets and Western commentators as anti-democratic. In 2012, as proposed by Putin's successor, Dmitry Medvedev, the direct election of governors was re-introduced. During his first term in office, Putin opposed some of the Yeltsin-era oligarchs, as well as his political opponents, resulting in the exile or imprisonment of such people as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky; other oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich and Arkady Rotenberg are friends and allies with Putin. Putin succeeded in codifying land law and tax law and promulgated new codes on labor, administrative, criminal, commercial and civil procedural law. Under Medvedev's presidency, Putin's government implemented some key reforms in the area of state security, the Russian police reform and the Russian military reform.

In September 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States, Putin announced Russia's support for the United States in its anti-terror campaign. However, when the United States' "war on terror" shifted focus to the ousting of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac in opposition of the plan.

In December 2012, Putin signed into a law a ban on the U.S. adoption of Russian children. According to Putin, the legislation which took effect on January 1, 2013, aimed to make it easier for Russians to adopt native orphans. However, the adoption ban spurred international controversy, reportedly leaving nearly 50 Russian children who were in the final phases of adoption with U.S. citizens at the time that Putin signed the law in legal limbo.

Putin further strained relations with the United States the following year when he granted asylum to Edward Snowden, who is wanted by the United States for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency. In response to Putin's actions, U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a planned meeting with Putin that August.

On 30 September 2015, President Putin authorized Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, following a formal request by the Syrian government for military help against rebel and jihadist groups.

The Russian military activities consisted of air strikes, cruise missile strikes and the use of frontline advisors and Russian special forces against militant groups opposed to the Syrian government, including the Syrian opposition, as well as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in the Levant), Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham and the Army of Conquest. After Putin's announcement on 14 March 2016 that the mission he had set for the Russian military in Syria had been "largely accomplished" and ordered the withdrawal of the "main part" of the Russian forces from Syria, Russian forces deployed in Syria continued to actively operate in support of the Syrian government.

In January 2017, a U.S. intelligence community assessment expressed "high confidence" that Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to denigrate Hillary Clinton and to harm her electoral chances and potential presidency. Putin has consistently denied any Russian interference in the U.S. election.

He was a member of such political parties like: People's Front (since 2011), Independent (1991–95; 2001–08; since 2012), CPSU (1975–91), Our Home – Russia (1995–99), Unity (1999–2001) and United Russia (2008–12).

Views

On February 7, 2014, Vladimir Putin declared the Sochi Winter Olympic Games open. In preparation for the Olympics, Sochi built 11 sports venues with a total capacity of 200,000 people. All in all, 380 buildings and structures were built for the Olympics, including the coastal and mountain clusters, transport, energy and hotel infrastructure.

As many as 2,876 athletes from 88 countries competed in the Olympics. This was the first time Russia hosted the Winter Olympic Games.

In 2004, President Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gases. However, Russia did not face mandatory cuts, because the Kyoto Protocol limits emissions to a percentage increase or decrease from 1990 levels and Russia's greenhouse-gas emissions fell well below the 1990 baseline due to a drop in economic output after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Putin personally supervises a number of protection programmes for rare and endangered animals in Russia, such as the Amur Tiger, the White Whale, the polar bear and the Snow Leopard.

Vladimir Putin is also an active supporter of measures to develop the agricultural sector.

Putin also upset many people with his new anti-gay laws. He made it illegal for gay couples to adopt in Russia and placed a ban on propagandizing "nontraditional" sexual relationships to minors. The legislation led to widespread international protest.

Personality

Putin has produced a large number of aphorisms and catch-phrases known as putinisms. Many of them were first made during his annual Q&A conferences, where Putin answered questions from journalists and other people in the studio, as well as from Russians throughout the country, who either phoned in or spoke from studios and outdoor sites across Russia. Putin is known for his often tough and sharp language, often alluding to Russian jokes and folk sayings.

Putin sometimes uses Russian criminal jargon (fenya), not always correctly.

As president and prime minister, Putin has lived in numerous official residences throughout the country. These residences include the Moscow Kremlin, Novo-Ogaryovo in Moscow Oblast, the White House in Moscow, Gorki-9 near Moscow, Bocharov Ruchey in Sochi, Dolgiye Borody in Novgorod Oblast, and Riviera in Sochi.

In August 2012, critics of President Vladimir Putin listed the ownership of 20 villas and palaces, nine of which were built during Putin's 12 years in power.

Putin has three dogs, Buffy, Yume, and Verni. Buffy, a Karakachan dog, was given to President Putin in November 2010 by the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov. Yume is an Akita Inu dog which arrived in Moscow in July 2012 as a three-month-old puppy as the Akita Prefecture's gift to show gratitude for Russia's assistance to Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Verni, which is an Alabai – a Turkmen-bred variety of the Central Asia shepherd dog – was a birthday gift from the leader of Turkmenistan during a meeting in Sochi in October 2017.

Putin's female black Labrador Retriever Konni was often seen at the President's side and was sometimes allowed to attend meetings when Putin greeted world leaders during their visits to Russia.

Putin is also frequently seen promoting sports and a healthy way of life among Russians, including promoting skiing, badminton, cycling, and fishing.

He watches football, and supports FC Zenit Saint Petersburg, from his home city. He also has displayed an interest in ice hockey and bandy, the latter which in Russia often is called 'Russian hockey'.

Putin began training in sambo at the age of 14, before switching to judo, which he continues to practice. Putin won competitions in both sports in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). Putin was awarded 8th dan of the black belt in 2012 and became the first Russian to have been awarded the eighth dan, joining a handful of judo fighters in the world who have achieved such status. Putin also practices karate.

He co-authored a book on his favorite sport, published in Russian as Judo with Vladimir Putin, and in English under the title Judo: History, Theory, Practice (2004). Benjamin Wittes, a black belt in taekwondo and aikido and editor of Lawfare, has disputed Putin's martial arts skills, saying that there is no video evidence of Putin displaying any actual noteworthy judo skills.

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  Sambo, Judo, Skiing, Ice hockey, Fishing, Horse-riding, Whitewater rafting.

Connections

In 1980, Putin met his future wife, Lyudmila, who was working as a flight attendant at the time. The couple married in 1983 and had two daughters: Maria, born in 1985, and Yekaterina, born in 1986. In early June 2013, after nearly 30 years of marriage, Russia's first couple announced that they were getting a divorce, providing little explanation for the decision, but assuring that they came to it mutually and amicably.

Father:

Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin

Mother:

Maria Ivanovna Shelomova

ex-wife:

Lyudmila Putina

Daughter:

Mariya Putina

Daughter:

Yekaterina Putina

Friend:

Silvio Berlusconi

colleague:

George Bush

References

• The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
• The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West
• The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past
• The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin