Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1952–    ), powerful Russian political leader who was president of
the Russian Federation from 1999 to 2008. He served briefly as prime minister under President Boris
Yeltsin in 1999, and assumed that office again in 2008. He was again elected to the presidency in 2012.
Road to Power
Putin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) on Oct. 7, 1952. After graduating (1975) from
Leningrad State University, where he studied law, he went to work for the Soviet secret police, or KGB.
Although much about his KGB service remains unclear, it is known that he was trained as a
counterintelligence agent and that he worked in Dresden, in what was then East Germany, from 1985 to
1990. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, Putin returned to his home city.
With the Soviet Union facing collapse, he retired from the KGB with the rank of lieutenant colonel and
launched a political career, serving as an aide to Anatoly Sobchak (1937–2000), his former law professor;
while Sobchak was mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin was first deputy mayor (1994–96).
Sobchak lost his reelection bid in 1996 and went into voluntary exile in France in November 1997, after
being accused of corruption in office. In the interim, Putin moved to Moscow and began his rapid ascent
through the Kremlin’s upper echelons. In March 1997 he was named to head the department that
oversees Russia’s regions, and a year later he became first deputy chief of staff. By mid-1999 he was
serving simultaneously as head of the KGB’s main successor agency, the Federal Security Service, and
as secretary of the Security Council, which coordinates the activities of the armed forces, security
agencies, and police.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin elevated him to the office of prime minister on Aug. 9, 1999, and he was
confirmed by parliament a week later. As head of government, Putin was in charge of the war against
Islamic separatists in Chechnya. Although the Communists won the single largest bloc of seats in the
December parliamentary elections, a coalition of parties loyal to Putin showed significant strength.
Putin as President
When Yeltsin unexpectedly stepped down on Dec. 31, 1999, he named Putin as his interim successor.
Favorable reports from the Chechnya battlefront, including the capture of Groznyy by Russian forces in
February 2000, boosted Putin’s domestic support, and in a presidential election on March 26 he won 53
percent of the vote against ten opponents. He was sworn in for a full 4-year term on May 7, 2000.
Operating from a position of strength, he secured legislative approval in April for two long-delayed arms
control agreements, the START II Treaty (see Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) and the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (see Arms Control, International).
In August 2000, when the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 crew
members, Putin was criticized for remaining on vacation while military leaders mishandled the situation. In
October 2002, while Russian troops continued to meet lethal resistance in Chechnya, some 50 armed
Chechen guerrillas seized more than 800 hostages in a Moscow theater. Nearly all the terrorists and 129
hostages were killed when an aerosol anesthetic was pumped in through ventilation ducts and then
Russian troops stormed the building; Putin came under criticism after it was revealed that most of the
hostages had died from the gas used.
Putin was unable to halt the continued expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but
worked out an agreement with NATO in 2002 on establishment of a NATO-Russian Council, giving
Russia an equal role in decision-making on anti-terrorism policies. He was not able to dissuade the Bush
administration from pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972), as a result of which Russia
abandoned START II. In 2003, however, the lower house of the Russian Parliament ratified the Russia-
U.S. agreement on strategic nuclear weapons reduction signed a year earlier, and that same month Putin
welcomed world leaders to his native St. Petersburg, which was celebrating its 300th anniversary. His
state visit to Great Britain in June 2003 was the first by a Russian leader since Czar Alexander II in 1874.
Putin appeared at first, to enjoy a cordial personal relationship with U.S. President  George W. Bush. After
the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 (see Terrorism), Putin supported the U.S.-led war
in Afghanistan, and the U.S., for its part, moderated its criticism of Russian tactics against the Chechnya
separatists. However, Putin strongly opposed U.S. military intervention in Iraq in early 2003, and worked
with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to prevent the United
Nations Security Council from giving prior authorization to a U.S.-led war against the regime of Saddam
Hussein. Putin became increasingly assertive in carving out a Russian role at odds with interests of the
West, including close relations with such governments as those of Iran and Venezuela, and the use of
gas supplies as a leverage to influence affairs in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine. Russia strongly
opposed U.S.-backed plans for a missile-defense system partly based in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Despite criticism in the West of Putin’s policies, he appeared to be enjoying strong popularity at home.
The Chechen situation showed some improvement, the economy was booming, bolstered by strong oil
revenues, and Putin was admired for cool and decisive leadership in both domestic and foreign affairs.
Putin’s allies had won legislative elections, Dec. 7, 2003, and the president was reelected Mar. 14, 2004,
with 71% of the vote, although international election monitors cited flaws on both occasions. The year
2004 was marked by major terrorist incidents; the midair explosion of two passenger planes and a suicide
bombing in a Moscow subway station, both in August 2004, and the seizing of a school in Beslan, North
Ossetia, by Chechen rebels the following month. In the latter incident more than 330 people, including
186 children, died when Russian troops stormed the building. Putin cited the terrorist threat as a basis for
centralizing his authority, specifically, providing for regional governors to be nominated by the president
(subject to legislative confirmation) instead of being elected by popular vote.

In 2005 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon whose political agenda had rivaled Putin’s, was convicted of
fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to prison. In October 2006 Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist fiercely
critical of the Putin administration, was murdered, apparently by professional assassins. She was the 13th
journalist murdered since 2000. Another Putin opponent, former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, was
poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 under mysterious circumstances, and died in London in
November 2006. Critics charged that the Russian government was linked to such crimes; the government
denied any connection. More generally, critics of Putin say that he suppressed many of freedoms won
after the fall of communism, created a new class of powerful oligarchs, and manipulated the political
system to retain strong power himself.

Putin’s allies again triumphed in December 2007 legislative elections. Putin himself was constitutionally
barred from seeking another successive presidential term in March 2008 elections. But his handpicked
candidate, Dmitry Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister and longtime associate, easily won election.
Putin continued to exert influence as prime minister, a post to which he was appointed by Medvedev once
the latter took office. He also was named in April 2008 as chairman of United Russia, the pro-government
party that dominates Russian politics.
Putin was again elected president in 2012. Election observers noted widespread irregularities in the
election, including reports of ballot tampering and people voting multiple times in different locations.

Putin ignited worldwide controversy in early 2014. That February, Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor
Yanukovych, fled his country after months of antigovernment protests. In March, Russia annexed the
Crimean Peninsula, which juts into the Black Sea from southern Ukraine. Putin claimed he was
protecting Crimea's ethnic Russian population from extremist forces. Ukraine's government, and many of
its allies, saw the move as illegal. In the following months, pro-Russian separatists took control of several
regions of eastern Ukraine. Western officials accused Putin's government of sending special forces troops
to the region and of providing the rebels with weapons. Putin denied the charges. As international
tensions remained high, several Western governments imposed sanctions on Russia, targeting the
country's oil and gas industries. The sanctions hit Russia's economy hard, sending the country into a
recession.

In 2018, Putin was elected to a fourth term as president in a landslide victory. In January 2020, Mikhail
Mishustin succeeded Medvedev as prime minister. In the following months, Putin’s government faced the
challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Russia’s people and economy. Also during 2020,
the Russian legislature passed, and voters later approved, a constitutional change that potentially allowed
Putin to seek reelection in 2024 and 2030.

Putin has sought to increase Russian influence especially in the nations of Central Asia and Eastern
Europe that were once part of the Soviet Union or closely tied to it. In 2021 and 2022, tensions rose in
Europe as a result of a Russian buildup of military forces near its border with Ukraine. In January 2022,
with more than 100,000 Russian troops positioned near the Ukrainian border for what Russia said were
military drills, Putin announced a number of security demands. These demands included that the United
States and other NATO members reduce their military presence in Eastern Europe and guarantee that
Ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO. Both NATO and the United States refused the Russian
demand to alter NATO policies and membership rules. They offered instead to negotiate on Russia's
security concerns about weapons and military forces based in Europe. They also warned Russia against
taking any military action in Ukraine.

By February, more than 150,000 Russian troops were positioned around Ukraine. Putin then took further
action to divide and destabilize Ukraine by announcing that Russia officially recognized the independence
of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. This recognition covered not only
land held by pro-Russian separatists in those regions, but also Ukrainian territory claimed by the
separatists but controlled by the Ukrainian government. Putin also authorized Russian troops to enter the
regions to help the separatists “maintain peace.” The European Union, the United Kingdom, the United
States, and other nations condemned Putin’s actions against Ukraine. They imposed a number of
economic sanctions and said harsher ones would follow any movement of Russian troops into Ukraine.

On February 23, the separatist leaders Putin had recently recognized requested Russian military aid. The
following morning in Russia, Putin announced that the country was undertaking military action against
Ukraine. Russian forces moved across Ukraine's borders to attack the country from three sides. Russian
missiles struck cities and other targets throughout Ukraine. Nations around the world condemned Putin's
actions.

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Source: Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia
Accession Number: pu155850