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Vladimir Putin

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Vladimir Putin
Putin
Order: 2nd President of Russia
Term of Office: December 31, 1999
Predecessor: Boris Yeltsin
Date of Birth: October 7, 1952
Political Party: None
Profession: lawyer

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин in Cyrillic lettering) (born October 7, 1952) has been the President of Russia since the year 2000.

Early Life

Putin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1975. A biography, Ot Pervova Litsa (First Person), based on interviews conducted with Putin in 2000, speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a supposedly rat-infested tenement in a communal apartment . During his KGB officer career from 1975 to 1991 he lived several years in the GDR (Eastern Germany). He was head of the FSB (the KGB's successor) from July 1998 to August 1999.

Prime Minister and First Term Presidency

Putin was appointed Prime Minister of the Russian Government by President Boris Yeltsin in August 1999. On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin resigned, and appointed Putin the second (acting) President of the Russian Federation. Proper Presidential elections were held on March 26, 2000, which Putin won in the first round.

In many ways, Putin is an atypical Russian leader: he is comparatively young and is a sports enthusiast — he has practiced Judo since his youth. He is a practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church whose conversion to Christianity (following a life-threatening fire at his dacha in the early 1990s) most observers agree was sincere. He speaks German with near-native fluency, and passable English. Putin is married to Liudmila Putina, a former teacher of German in Moscow, and they have two children, Yekaterina (Katya) (born 1985) and Maria (born 1986 in Dresden). Their daughters have attended the German School in Moscow (Deutsche Schule Moskau).

Unlike his predecessor, President Putin has been less enthusiastic about erasing Russia's Soviet past from memory. He has stated his belief that whatever the crimes of the Communist regime, it was nevertheless an important part of Russian history, and an important influence on the creation of modern Russian society. As a result, some Soviet-era symbols have been allowed to return to Russia, such as the trademark red military flag, the "Soviet Star" crest, and the Soviet national anthem (although with revised lyrics). In 2004, Putin declared the collapse of the USSR a "national tragedy on an enormous scale."

During his time in office, Putin has attempted to strengthen relations with other members of the CIS. The 'near abroad' zone of traditional Russian influence has again become a foreign policy priority under Putin as the EU and NATO have grown to encompass much of Central Europe and, more recently, the Baltic states. While tacitly acknowledging the enlargement of NATO into the Baltic states, Putin has increased Russia's influence over Belarus and Ukraine.

Putin opposed the war in Iraq during the Iraq crisis of 2003. After the war ended, American president George W. Bush asked the United Nations for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq. Putin supported lifting of the sanctions in due course, arguing that first UN commission be given a chance to complete its work on the search of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

A pro-Putin United Russia party won a landslide victory in the 2003 parliamentary elections. Foreign observers called the election itself free, but noted that the largely government-run media, especially Russian national TV, had massively and unfairly campaigned for the governing party only.

Indeed, most Russian TV stations, newspapers and other media are nowadays controlled directly or indirectly by the Kremlin. Western critics accuse Putin of having orchestrated the trials against "oligarchs" such as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky and later Mikhail Khodorkovsky to regain control over the media and large swathes of the Russian economy.

It is said that there are two factions operating within Putin's Kremlin. One, the siloviki, is associated with the more nationalist elements of the military and security services. The other, tagged the "Family", are people linked with former President Boris Yeltsin and the oligarchs who prospered during his term in office. These two factions often disagree fiercely, as they did in relation to the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oil magnate. Putin has been careful not to be seen to be with one faction or the other, with his Chief of Staff Alexander Voloshin identified as linked to the Family. It is believed that Voloshin threatened to resign in protest at the arrest of Khodorkovsky. Putin accepted the resignation and replaced him with Dmitry Medvedev, the chairman of the gas company Gazprom of which the Russian state owns 38% directly.

Another linked to the Family is former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Defying Putin's direct instruction to avoid involvement in the matter, Kasyanov expressed great concern about the Khodorkovsky prosecution and declared the freezing of a controlling stake in Yukos unprecedented.

On 24 February 2004, less than a month prior to the elections, Putin dismissed Prime Minister Kasyanov and the entire Russian cabinet and appointed Viktor Khristenko acting prime minister. On March 1, he appointed Mikhail Fradkov to the position.

File:Putin Bush.jpg
Vladimir Putin with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Second Term Presidency

On March 14, 2004, the Presidential elections were held and Putin won the re-election to the Presidency for his second term with 71% of the votes. Again there had been massive campaigning by Russian national TV, but again the election itself was fair. Although Russian Presidents are not limited in the number of terms they can serve, they cannot serve for more than two successive terms. So Putin is not permitted under the Constitution of Russian Federation to run for a third successive term in 2008 (following the 2003 parliamentary elections he gained a sufficient majority to change the Constitution, but so far he hasn't announced any intention to do so.)

On September 13th, 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis, and nearly-concurrent terrorist attacks in Moscow, Putin launched an initiative to replace the election of regional governors with a system whereby they would be directy appointed by the President and approved by regional legislatures. Opponents of this measure, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Colin Powell, see it as a step away from democracy in Russia and a return to the centrally run political apparatus of the Soviet era. Also on that day, Putin publicly backed a plan by the Central Elections Commission for voters in Duma elections to elect parties rather than individual candidates. Half of the 450 deputies in the Duma get elected based party votes, while the other deputies are elected individually in single-mandate districts. This measure is also seen as an attempt by the President at consolidating power.

During the Ukrainian presidential election in 2004, Putin twice visited Ukraine before the election to show his support for Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and congratulated him on his victory before official election results (later rejected as fraudulent). Putin's support for Yanukovych was criticized by some commentators as unwanted interference in the affairs of post-Soviet Ukraine.

While President Putin is criticized as an autocrat by some of his Western counterparts, his relationships with the American President George W. Bush, the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are often said to be friendly. Some consider his Chechen policy as a vital part in the war on terror, while more critical voices denounce what they see as Russia's disastrous human rights record in the breakaway republic and the short-sightedness of the military solution envisioned by Putin.

Quotations

"I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." said US President George W. Bush, June 16, 2001, after their first meeting, his first with a head of state. Putin, dead-pan, said of the very recently and thoroughly briefed US President, "This is a man who reads."

"We will corner the bandits in the shithouse and wipe them out" President Putin details his strategy for dealing with Chechen rebels (source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1397914_2,00.html)

Preceded by:

Boris Yeltsin

President of Russia Succeeded by:
(Still in office)
Preceded by:
Sergei Stepashin
Prime Minister of Russia Succeeded by:
Mikhail Kasyanov