putin biography childhood

The Putin Files

Vladimir Putin's Early Life

Highlights from this theme.

“He imagined he himself, he with his very hands, could restore Russian dignity. At that moment, there he is, shredding documents in Dresden.”

The New Yorker

“We viewed 1991 as the end and the beginning, and the transition from this to that. I think in the way that Putin thinks, it was just a pause...”

Molly McKew

Adviser to former president of Georgia

“For the majority of Russians, he was just a guy who came from nowhere and who showed himself being strong...”

Tikhon Dzyadko

Russian journalist

“The KGB office sent me a letter, and they explained to me what I should be doing to get a job in the KGB. So for Putin and for myself, we are people of the same generation.”

Gennady Gudkov

Opposition politician

“He has wanted to be a secret agent all of his life, as long as he can remember...”

Masha Gessen

Author, "The Man Without a Face"

“One of his great life lessons is never show weakness because the weak are always defeated.”

David Hoffman

The Washington Post

“The KGB's men, they were all suspicious. They were suspicious of everybody. Every person could be suspicious and [could] harm the Soviet state. I think that Putin still bears all those features...”

Irina Borogan

Co-author, "The Red Web"

“That's the moment when central authority becomes untethered for Vladimir Putin, and it's scary, and it’s uncertain, and he seems to want to restore the authority of the center for evermore...”

Susan Glasser

Co-author, "Kremlin Rising"

“Soviet influence is collapsing before his eyes, and he calls home; he radios home, and home isn't there.”

Julia Ioffe

The Atlantic

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Early career

First and second terms as president of russia, putin as prime minister.

• The Ukraine conflict and Syrian intervention
• Silencing critics and actions in the West
• Salisbury Novichok attack and relationship with Trump
• Constitutional change and the poisoning of Navalny
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Prigozhin’s mutiny

Why is Vladimir Putin still in power?

How has vladimir putin changed russia, what’s the background to vladimir putin’s attack on ukraine in 2022.

• What is the Syrian Civil War?
• How did the Syrian Civil War begin?

Vladimir Putin

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• The Brookings Institution - Who Is Mr. Putin?
• Official Site of Vladimir Putin
• NPR News - A Special Report - Vladimir Putin: A Biographical Timeline
• Vladimir Putin - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Vladimir Putin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Who is Vladimir Putin?

Vladimir Putin is a former Russian intelligence officer and a politician who has served as president of Russia from 1999 to 2008 and from 2012 to the present. He was also the country’s prime minister in 1999 and from 2008 to 2012.

Was Vladimir Putin in the KGB?

Vladimir Putin served for 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer in the KGB , the foreign intelligence and domestic security agency of the Soviet Union. In 1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

When Vladimir Putin was named president in 1999, Russia ’s constitution limited the president to two consecutive terms. That’s why, after his second term ended in 2008, he served as prime minister before becoming president again in 2012. However, in January 2020 Putin drafted a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain president for two more terms. It was included in a package of amendments that was approved by the Russian legislature and, in July 2020, by Russian voters in a national referendum.

In the two decades of Vladimir Putin’s reign, he has consolidated his rule and projected to the Russian people an image of Russia as a global power. He turned Russia from a nascent democratic state into an autocratic one, expanded Russia’s influence in the Middle East , strengthened Russian relations with China , and displayed a willingness to use force to achieve his goals, as in his annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine moved toward closer integration with Europe. When pro-Russian Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yanukovych tried to reverse that trend in 2014, protests swept him from power . Having lost an ally, Vladimir Putin invaded and annexed the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea . He also provoked separatist uprisings in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions in eastern Ukraine; fighting between pro-Russian militias and the Ukrainian government continued there for years. Running on a populist reform platform, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019 with more than 70 percent of the vote. In 2021 Putin ordered a buildup of troops along Russia’s border with Ukraine, and in February 2022, after he announced the beginning of a “special military operation,” Russian forces invaded Ukraine .

Recent News

Vladimir Putin (born October 7, 1952, Leningrad , Russia, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg, Russia]) is a Russian intelligence officer and politician who has served as president (1999–2008 and 2012– ) of Russia and as the country’s prime minister (1999 and 2008–12). One of the 21st century’s most influential leaders, Putin has shaped his country’s political landscape for decades with a mix of strategic maneuvers, military aggression against Russia’s neighbors, and controversial policies.

Putin reintroduced highly centralized, top-down control within Russia. He tightened the Kremlin ’s grip on mass media and the Internet, and he renationalized key industries; by some estimates, the state came to control as much as 70 percent of the Russian economy. He made it clear to Russia’s oligarchs that their positions were conditional on their personal loyalty to him and their abstention from politics. Putin also tried to assert dominance in the “near abroad”—a Russian term for the former Soviet states on Russia’s borders. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and launched a proxy war in Ukraine in 2014, prior to a full-scale invasion in 2022.

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 Putin 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 behavior, 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.

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly announced his resignation and named Putin acting president. Promising to rebuild a weakened Russia , the austere and reserved Putin easily won the March 2000 elections with about 53 percent of the vote. As president, he sought to end corruption and create a strongly regulated market economy.

Putin quickly reasserted control over Russia’s 89 regions and republics , dividing them into seven new federal districts, each headed by a representative appointed by the president. He also removed the right of regional governors to sit in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. Putin moved to reduce the power of Russia’s unpopular financiers and media tycoons—the so-called “ oligarchs ”—by closing several media outlets and launching criminal proceedings against numerous leading figures. He faced a difficult situation in Chechnya , particularly from rebels who staged terrorist attacks in Moscow and guerrilla attacks on Russian troops from the region’s mountains; in 2002 Putin declared the military campaign over, but casualties remained high.

Putin strongly objected to U.S. Pres. George W. Bush ’s decision in 2001 to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty . In response to the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, he pledged Russia’s assistance and cooperation in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorists and their allies, offering the use of Russia’s airspace for humanitarian deliveries and help in search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French Pres. Jacques Chirac in 2002–03 to oppose U.S. and British plans to use force to oust Saddam Hussein ’s government in Iraq .

Overseeing an economy that enjoyed growth after a prolonged recession in the 1990s, Putin was easily reelected in March 2004. In parliamentary elections in December 2007, Putin’s party, United Russia , won an overwhelming majority of seats. Though the fairness of the elections was questioned by international observers and by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , the results nonetheless affirmed Putin’s power. With a constitutional provision forcing Putin to step down in 2008, he chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.

Soon after Medvedev won the March 2008 presidential election by a landslide, Putin announced that he had accepted the position of chairman of the United Russia party. Confirming widespread expectations, Medvedev nominated Putin as the country’s prime minister within hours of taking office on May 7, 2008. Russia’s parliament confirmed the appointment the following day. Although Medvedev grew more assertive as his term progressed, Putin was still regarded as the main power within the Kremlin .

While some speculated that Medvedev might run for a second term, he announced in September 2011 that he and Putin would—pending a United Russia victory at the polls—trade positions. Widespread irregularities in parliamentary elections in December 2011 triggered a wave of popular protest, and Putin faced a surprisingly strong opposition movement in the presidential race. On March 4, 2012, however, Putin was elected to a third term as Russia’s president . In advance of his inauguration, Putin resigned as United Russia chairman, handing control of the party to Medvedev. He was inaugurated as president on May 7, 2012, and one of his first acts upon assuming office was to nominate Medvedev to serve as prime minister .

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin served as president of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and was re-elected to the presidency in 2012, where he has stayed ever since. He previously served as Russia's prime minister.

1952-present

Latest News: Vladimir Putin Announces 2024 Russian Presidential Run

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Friday he will seek to remain in the position for a fifth term during Russia’s upcoming elections on March 17, 2024. If re-elected, Putin could remain in power through 2030 because of the six-year term length. “I won’t hide it from you—I had various thoughts about it over time, but now, you’re right, it’s necessary to make a decision,” Putin said in a statement released by the Kremlin. “I will run for president of the Russian Federation.”

According to the Associated Press , the 71-year-old Putin, who was first elected president in March 2000, has twice amended the Russian constitution so that he could theoretically remain in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin .

Who Is Vladimir Putin?

Quick facts, early life and political career, president of russia: first and second terms, third term as president, chemical weapons in syria, 2014 winter olympics, invasion into crimea, syrian airstrikes, u.s. election hacks, fourth presidential term, invasion of ukraine, seeking fifth presidential term, personal life.

In 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister and promoted former KGB officer Vladimir Putin in his place. In December 1999, Yeltsin resigned, appointing Putin president, and he was re-elected in 2004. In April 2005, he made a historic visit to Israel—the first visit there by any Kremlin leader. Putin could not run for the presidency again in 2008, but was appointed prime minister by his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin was re-elected to the presidency in March 2012 and later won a fourth term. In 2014, he was reportedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

FULL NAME: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin BORN: October 7, 1952 BIRTHPLACE: Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Russia SPOUSE: Lyudmila Shkrebneva (1983-2014) CHILDREN: Maria, Yekaterina ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, on October 7, 1952. He grew up with his family in a communal apartment, attending the local grammar and high schools, where he developed an interest in sports. After graduating from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975, Putin began his career in the KGB as an intelligence officer. Stationed mainly in East Germany, he held that position until 1990, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Upon returning to Russia, Putin held an administrative position at the University of Leningrad, and after the fall of communism in 1991, he 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. There, in 1998, Putin was appointed deputy head of management under Boris Yeltsin’s presidential administration. In that position, he was in charge of the Kremlin's relations with the regional governments.

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.

In September 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States, Putin announced Russia’s support for the U.S. in its anti-terror campaign. However, when the U.S.’s “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 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 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.

Around this time, 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.

In September 2013, tensions rose between the United States and Syria over Syria’s possession of chemical weapons, with the U.S. threatening military action if the weapons were not relinquished. The immediate crisis was averted, however, when the Russian and U.S. governments brokered a deal whereby those weapons would be destroyed.

On September 11, 2013, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by Putin titled “A Plea for Caution From Russia.” In the article, Putin spoke directly to the U.S.’s position in taking action against Syria, stating that such a unilateral move could result in the escalation of violence and unrest in the Middle East.

Putin further asserted that the U.S. claim that Bashar al-Assad used the chemical weapons on civilians might be misplaced, with the more likely explanation being the unauthorized use of the weapons by Syrian rebels. He closed the piece by welcoming the continuation of an open dialogue between the involved nations to avoid further conflict in the region.

In 2014, Russia hosted the Winter Olympics, which were held in Sochi beginning on February 6. According to NBS Sports, Russia spent roughly $50 billion in preparation for the international event.

However, in response to what many perceived as Russia’s recently passed anti-gay legislation, the threat of international boycotts arose. In October 2013, Putin tried to allay some of these concerns, saying in an interview broadcast on Russian television that, “We will do everything to make sure that athletes, fans and guests feel comfortable at the Olympic Games regardless of their ethnicity, race or sexual orientation.”

In terms of security for the event, Putin implemented new measures aimed at cracking down on Muslim extremists, and in November 2013 reports surfaced that saliva samples had been collected from some Muslim women in the North Caucasus region. The samples were ostensibly to be used to gather DNA profiles, in an effort to combat female suicide bombers known as “black widows.”

Shortly after the conclusion of the 2014 Winter Olympics, amidst widespread political unrest in Ukraine, which resulted in the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, Putin sent Russian troops into Crimea, a peninsula in the country’s northeast coast of the Black Sea. The peninsula had been part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, former Premier of the Soviet Union, gave it to Ukraine in 1954.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Yuriy Sergeyev, claimed that approximately 16,000 troops invaded the territory, and Russia’s actions caught the attention of several European countries and the United States, who refused to accept the legitimacy of a referendum in which the majority of the Crimean population voted to secede from Ukraine and reunite with Russia.

Putin defended his actions, insisting that the troops sent into Ukraine were only meant to enhance Russia’s military defenses within the country—referring to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has its headquarters in Crimea. He also vehemently denied accusations by other nations, particularly the United States, that Russia intended to engage Ukraine in war.

He went on to claim that although he was granted permission from Russia's upper house of Parliament to use force in Ukraine, he found it unnecessary. Putin also wrote off any speculation that there would be a further incursion into Ukrainian territory, saying, “Such a measure would certainly be the very last resort.”

The following day, it was announced that Putin had been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

In September 2015, Russia surprised the world by announcing it would begin strategic airstrikes in Syria. Despite government officials’ assertions that the military actions were intended to target the extremist Islamic State, which made significant advances in the region due to the power vacuum created by Syria's ongoing civil war, Russia's true motives were called into question, with many international analysts and government officials claiming that the airstrikes were in fact aimed at the rebel forces attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's historically repressive regime.

In late October 2017, Putin was personally involved in another alarming form of aerial warfare when he oversaw a late-night military drill that resulted in the launch of four ballistic missiles across the country. The drill came during a period of escalating tensions in the region, with Russian neighbor North Korea also drawing attention for its missile tests and threats to engage the U.S. in destructive conflict.

In December 2017, Putin announced he was ordering Russian forces to begin withdrawing from Syria, saying the country’s two-year campaign to destroy ISIS was complete, though he left open the possibility of returning if terrorist violence resumed in the area. Despite the declaration, Pentagon spokesman Robert Manning was hesitant to endorse that view of events, saying, “Russian comments about removal of their forces do not often correspond with actual troop reductions.”

Months prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies unilaterally agreed that Russian intelligence was behind the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, who had, at the time, been chairman of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

In December 2016 unnamed senior CIA officials further concluded “with a high level of confidence” that Putin was personally involved in intervening in the U.S. presidential election, according to a report by USA Today . The officials further went on to assert that the hacked DNC and Podesta emails that were given to WikiLeaks just before U.S. Election Day were designed to undermine Clinton’s campaign in favor of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump . Soon after, the FBI and National Intelligence Agency publicly supported the CIA’s assessments.

Putin denied any such attempts to disrupt the U.S. election, and despite the assessments of his intelligence agencies, President Trump generally seemed to favor the word of his Russian counterpart. Underscoring their attempts to thaw public relations, the Kremlin in late 2017 revealed that a terror attack had been thwarted in St. Petersburg, thanks to intelligence provided by the CIA.

Around that time, 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.

Shortly before the first formal summit between Presidents Putin and Trump in July 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictments of 12 Russian operatives on charges relating to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Regardless, Trump suggested he was satisfied with his counterpart’s “strong and powerful" denial in a joint news conference and praised Putin’s offer to submit the 12 indicted agents to questioning with American witnesses present.

In a subsequent interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, Putin seemingly defended the hacking of the DNC server by suggesting that no false information was planted in the process. He also rejected the idea that he had compromising information about Trump, saying that the businessman “was of no interest for us” before announcing his presidential campaign, and notably refused to touch a copy of the indictments offered to him by Wallace.

In March 2018, toward the end of his third term, Putin boasted of new weaponry that would render NATO defenses “completely worthless,” including a low-flying nuclear-capable cruise missile with “unlimited” range and another one capable of traveling at hypersonic speed. His demonstration included video animation of attacks on the United States.

Not long afterward, a two-hour documentary, titled Putin , was posted to several social media pages and a pro-Kremlin YouTube account. Designed to showcase the president in a strong yet humane light, the doc featured Putin sharing the story of how he ordered a hijacked plane shot down to head off a bomb scare at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, as well as recollections of his grandfather's days as a cook for Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin .

On March 18, 2018, the fourth anniversary of the country’s seizure of Crimea, Russian citizens overwhelmingly elected Putin to a fourth presidential term, with 67 percent of the electorate turning out to award him more than 76 percent of the vote. The divided opposition stood little chance against the popular leader, his closest competitor notching around 13 percent of the vote.

Little was expected to change regarding Putin’s strategies for rebuilding the country as a global power, though the start of his final term set off questions about his successor, and whether he would affect constitutional change in an attempt to remain in office indefinitely.

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, for the first formal talks between the two leaders. According to Russia, topics of the meeting included the ongoing war in Syria and “the removal of the concerns” about accusations of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The following April, Putin met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un for the first time. The two leaders discussed the issue of the North Korean laborers in Russia, while Putin also offered support of his counterpart’s denuclearization negotiations with the U.S., saying Kim would need “security guarantees” in exchange for abandoning his nuclear program.

The topic of whether Putin aimed to extend his hold on power resurfaced following his state-of-the-nation speech in January 2020, which included proposals for constitutional amendments that included transferring the power to select the prime minister and cabinet from the president to the Parliament. The entire cabinet, including Medvedev, promptly resigned, leading to the selection of Mikhail V. Mishustin as the new prime minister.

Despite Putin’s earlier remarks of further incursion into Ukraine being a last resort, in the spring of 2021, Russian military forces began forming near the borders of the neighboring country for what the Kremlin claimed were training exercises. According to Reuters , more than 100,000 troops had deployed by November.

On December 17, Russia released a list of security demands that included NATO pulling back forces and weaponry from its eastern flank and ceasing further expansion, including the possible addition of Ukraine into the alliance. If the demands were not met, a “military response” was promised.

Then on February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with missile and rocket strikes on Ukrainian cities and military installations. In a televised address, Putin—claiming that Russian speakers in Ukraine faced genocide—referred to the invasion as a “special military operation,” designed to “achieve the demilitarization and denazification" of the country. In the early hours, Russian forces took Chernobyl, site of the infamous 1986 nuclear disaster, but were held back from the capital city of Kyiv.

As the conflict dragged on with Western allies supporting Ukraine, Putin announced the “special mobilization” of more than 100,000 reserve troops in September 2022.

Ukrainian troops launched a counteroffensive in June 2023 and, as of December, the conflict is still ongoing. The U.S. estimated that August that around 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded or killed.

In December 2023, Putin announced that he would seek a fifth term as president of Russia in the country's upcoming elections in March 2024. With a victory, he would be able to remain in power until at least 2030 and potentially run for another subsequent six-year term.

Putin is not expected to face any serious challengers and remains popular domestically. According to CNBC , a survey by Russian news agency Tass found that more than 78 percent of Russians trust Putin, and more than 75 percent approve of his activities.

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.

“There are people who just cannot put up with it,” Putin stated. “Lyudmila Alexandrovna has stood watch for eight, almost nine years.” Providing more context to the decision, Lyudmila added, “Our marriage is over because we hardly ever see each other. Vladimir Vladimirovich is immersed in his work, our children have grown and are living their own lives.”

An Orthodox Christian, Putin is said to attend church services on important dates and holidays on a regular basis and has had a long history of encouraging the construction and restoration of thousands of churches in the region. He generally aims to unify all faiths under the government’s authority and legally requires religious organizations to register with local officials for approval.

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Ever since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and with no end to the conflict in sight, many commentators have tried to explain what motivates the Russian president.

Putin has been called a “raging bully”; an “aggressive narcissist” and a “ septuagenarian in a hurry to make his name in the history books as the man who saved Russia”, said Katie Strick in the Evening Standard .

Why won’t Vladimir Putin cut his losses in Ukraine? Will Vladimir Putin be put on trial for Ukraine’s stolen children crisis? Is Putin preparing for a nuclear attack on Ukraine?

But it could be his past, particularly his tough childhood, that provides the greatest understanding of Putin’s present strategy.

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“As he himself admits, it was then, in neighborhood brawls, that he learned lessons that he has followed ever since – to take on any and all adversaries, never to retreat, and to fight to the finish,” says William Taubman in The Boston Globe .

‘The miracle baby’

Putin grew up in the ruins of post-war Leningrad – now St Petersburg – a city scarred by a brutal 900-day siege during the Second World War. Putin’s mother, Maria, almost died of starvation while his father was away fighting.

His was a gritty, hungry childhood in a neighbourhood overshadowed by war and infested with vermin. “From the outset it was the survival of the fittest,” wrote Philip Short in The Sunday Times . At the hospital where Maria gave birth, one newborn in 50 died before leaving; a harrowing statistic for a mother who had already lost two baby sons.

Although it was an unsentimental upbringing, Putin’s parents doted on him as their “miracle baby”, said the Daily Mirror , and he was treated as a king, according to author Masha Gessen. This despite his mediocre grades and bad behaviour in class, said ABC News .

He had a wristwatch as a teen – something his dad didn’t have – and when his parents won a car, they gave it to their son, according to the Mirror. “There’s a lot of proof he feels he is chosen now,” said Gessen. The proof could include his sprawling “Putin’s Palace” home, photos of him riding bare-chested on horseback, and his immense personal wealth.

His love for spy novels as a child strengthened his self-belief in his own unique destiny. “Books and programmes about espionage like ‘The Shield and the Sword’ took hold of my imagination,” Putin later explained. “What amazed me most of all was how one man’s effort could achieve what whole armies could not.”

He went on to become a KGB spy, and his romantic notions also help explain his desire to restore Russia’s former glory and rebuild the Russian Empire. “He will always be a KGB man, deep down,” British cartoonist Darryl Cunningham told the Evening Standard. “He still looks back to the old Soviet Union and all the lands and countries that they dominated.”

He was said to be furious when the Soviet Union collapsed, blaming the then Russian president, Mikhail Gorbachev, for being “weak”. It is “a wrong many believe he is still trying to right today”, said Strick in the Standard.

‘No retreat’

He might have been treated as royalty by his parents as a child, but he was small and often picked upon. Despite this, he never shrank from a brawl. His best friend at school recalled to The Boston Globe: “He could get into a fight with anyone… He had no fear… If some hulking guy offended him, he would jump straight at him – scratch him, bite him, pull out clumps of his hair.” He would later earn himself a black belt in judo, and was praised for his dogged work ethic.

One particularly illustrative example is his account of facing down a rat in the building where he lived. “It had nowhere to run,” Putin recalled in his memoir. “Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me… Luckily, I was a little faster and I managed to slam the door shut in its nose.” Years later he would reach the conclusion: “No one should be cornered. No one should be put in a situation where they have no way out,” explained Short in The Sunday Times.

In fact, it was his scrapping as a child, rather than his years at the KGB, which shaped him the most, helping him form the view that if a fight is inevitable, you should always throw the first punch. “If something happens,” he insisted, “you should proceed from the fact that there is no retreat.” As late as 2016, Putin was still drawing this same lesson, said Taubman in The Boston Globe, using Israel as an example. “Israel never steps back but fights to the end and that is how it survives,” Putin wrote.

It’s an attitude that also explains his attitude to the US in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine, one that could spell disaster, said Taubman. “Would he dare to use tactical nuclear weapons to bring that about? If Putin won’t quit, who is to say he wouldn’t?”

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Vladimir Putin

By: History.com Editors

Published: September 25, 2023

Vladimir Putin (1952-) is a former KGB agent who has ruled Russia for more than two decades. Intent on restoring Russian might following the collapse of the Soviet Union , he has launched several military campaigns, including an invasion of Ukraine, and helped usher in what’s often described as a new Cold War . Meanwhile, he has steadily tightened his grip on power, persecuting political opponents, shuttering independent media outlets, and otherwise dismantling the country’s nascent democracy.

Putin's Early Years and Personal Life

Much about Vladimir Putin’s personal life remains murky. Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952, he has recalled growing up modestly in a rat-infested communal apartment building. His parents, who lost two children prior to his birth—one of whom died during the prolonged Nazi siege of Leningrad in World War II —apparently doted on him despite working long hours. As a youth, he practiced martial arts and is reputed to have gotten into many fist fights.

In 1983, Putin married a flight attendant, Lyudmila Shkrebneva, with whom he has two daughters. (The couple divorced around 2013.) He is rumored to have fathered other children as well. Throughout his time in office, Putin has kept his family out of the public eye.

Putin as a KGB Agent

After studying law at Leningrad State University, Putin joined the KGB , the Soviet counterpart of the CIA. In the mid-1980s, he was sent to the city of Dresden in East Germany, where, in his words, he gathered “political intelligence,” in part by recruiting sources. Putin remained in Dresden during the fall of the Berlin Wall , and, with a risky bluff , purportedly prevented a crowd of protestors from storming the local KGB headquarters.

Putin's Political Rise

Putin returned to Leningrad in 1990 and claimed to have resigned from the KGB the following year. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union affected him deeply; he later called it the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Around that time, he got his political start as an aide to Anatoly Sobchak , his former teacher who became his mentor and St. Petersburg’s mayor.

In 1996, Sobchak lost his bid for re-election and later fled abroad amid corruption allegations. Yet Putin continued his meteoric rise, moving to Moscow, Russia’s capital, and securing one Kremlin post after another (while also defending an economics dissertation he allegedly plagiarized ). By 1998, Putin led the KGB’s main successor organization, and the following year President Boris Yeltsin named him prime minister, the country’s second-highest office, thereby elevating him from obscurity to heir apparent.

When an ailing and increasingly unpopular Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999, Putin took over as acting president. (Months later, he would win election to a full term.) Helped by rising oil and gas prices, the economy improved in the early 2000s and living standards rose. Many Russians saw him as bringing order and stability after the hyperinflation, tumultuousness, and perceived lawlessness of the Yeltsin years.

Putin's Consolidation of Power

In his first address as Russia’s president, Putin promised to protect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and property rights, and he likewise announced his commitment to democracy. Yet democratic backsliding began almost immediately under his leadership. The Kremlin brought independent television networks under state control and shut down other news outlets; abolished gubernatorial and senatorial elections; curtailed the judiciary; and restricted opposition political parties. When elections took place, outside observers noted widespread voter irregularities. Putin’s system was sometimes referred to as a “managed democracy.”

Because Russia’s constitution barred a third consecutive term, Putin stepped down in 2008, with his longtime confidante Dmitry Medvedev taking over as president. But Putin retained the role of prime minister and left little doubt about who was really in charge. When Medvedev’s term ended in 2012, the two swapped positions, and Putin once again became president. He has occupied the top job ever since, at one point signing a law that allows him to stay in power until 2036.

Putin has habitually placed his friends and old intelligence colleagues in key posts, several of whom became extravagantly wealthy, and he’s propagated a cult of personality. Perceived opponents have been called “scum” and “traitors” and dealt with harshly. Some, like oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have been jailed, whereas others have wound up dead. In 2006, for example, investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down on Putin’s birthday, and that same year Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in England with radioactive polonium.

More recently, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was banned from running for president, survived an assassination attempt , and was then imprisoned on what’s widely considered to be politically motivated charges. Yet another high-profile death occurred in 2023, when Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash after launching a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership.

Putin's Relationship with the West

Many Western leaders originally approved of Putin, with U.S. President George W. Bush saying he had “looked the man in the eye,” found him “very straightforward and trustworthy,” and gotten a “sense of his soul.” Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11 , 2001. And though he opposed the Iraq War , Putin assisted in aspects of the so-called War on Terror . He moreover described Russia as a “friendly European nation” that desired “stable peace on the continent.”

Putin’s relationship with the West deteriorated, however, in part over NATO ’s 2004 expansion into seven Eastern European countries and over pro-Western revolutions that broke out in Georgia and Ukraine. Putin was furthermore irked by U.S. lobbying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and by its support for an independent Kosovo. In 2007, he accused the United States of overstepping “its national borders in every way.” Over time, Putin came to think of himself as a protector of traditional Russian values, standing up to a hypocritical and morally decadent West.

In 2014, as tensions escalated over Ukraine, Russia was expelled from the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Around that time, he granted asylum to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden . And, according to U.S. intelligence agencies , he interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election , greenlighting a computer hacking operation that infiltrated the campaign of Hillary Clinton .   

Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump maintained generally friendly ties. But the U.S.-Russian relationship reached arguably its lowest point in decades following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Russia has been hit with a slew of economic sanctions, Ukraine has received much Western military assistance, and U.S. President Joe Biden has called Putin a “thug,” a “murderous dictator,” and a “war criminal.”

Putin's Wars

During his more than two decades in office, Putin has used the military in increasingly aggressive ways.  Early in his tenure, he violently suppressed a separatist movement in the Russian republic of Chechnya. In 2008, he orchestrated a brief but large-scale invasion of Georgia , thus cementing Russian control of the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Starting in 2015, he intervened in the Syrian civil war , among other things authorizing a prolonged bombardment of the city of Aleppo. Additionally, he has deployed Russian mercenaries in various African countries .

Putin’s most prolonged conflict has taken place in Ukraine . In 2014, when Ukrainian protestors ousted their Russian-backed president, Putin responded by annexing Crimea—which had been gifted from Russia to Ukraine during the Soviet era—and by backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Then, in 2022, he launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine, but failed to take Kiev, the capital. Heavy fighting has since claimed hundreds of thousands of lives . The Russian armed forces have been accused of purposely targeting civilians and committing torture and other atrocities, prompting the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for Putin’s arrest (though he is unlikely to stand trial).

The Man Without a Face : The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin , by Masha Gessen, published by Riverhead Books, 2012. The Strongman : Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia , by Angus Roxburgh, published by I.B. Tauris, 2012. First Person : An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin , 2000. ‘The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin,’ by Steven Lee Myers. The New York Times , November 8, 2015. The Making of Vladimir Putin. The New York Times , March 26, 2022. Putin, Vladimir. Encyclopedia Britannica

HISTORY Vault: Vladimir Putin

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Biography of Vladimir Putin: From KGB Agent to Russian President

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Early Life, Education, and Career

• Prime Minister 1999

Acting President 1999 to 2000

First presidential term 2000 to 2004, second presidential term 2004 to 2008, second premiership 2008 to 2012.

• Third Presidential Term 2012 to 2018

Fourth Presidential Term 2018

Invasion of ukraine, interference in 2016 us presidential election, personal life, net worth, and religion, notable quotes, sources and references.

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Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former KGB intelligence officer currently serving as President of Russia. Elected to his current and fourth presidential term in May 2018, Putin has led the Russian Federation as either its prime minister, acting president, or president since 1999. Long considered an equal of the President of the United States in holding one of the world’s most powerful public offices, Putin has aggressively exerted Russia’s influence and political policy around the world.

Fast Facts: Vladimir Puton

• Full Name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
• Born: October 7, 1952, Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) 
• Parents’ Names: Maria Ivanovna Shelomova and Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin
• Spouse: Lyudmila Putina (married in 1983, divorced in 2014)
• Children: Two daughters; Mariya Putina and Yekaterina Putina
• Education: Leningrad State University
• Known for: Russian Prime Minister and Acting President of Russia, 1999 to 2000; President of Russia 2000 to 2008 and 2012 to present; Russian Prime Minister 2008 to 2012.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). His mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova was a factory worker and his father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, had served in the Soviet Navy submarine fleet during World War II and worked as a foreman at an automobile factory during the 1950s. In his official state biography, Putin recalls, “I come from an ordinary family, and this is how I lived for a long time, nearly my whole life. I lived as an average, normal person and I have always maintained that connection.” 

While attending elementary and high school, Putin took up judo in hopes of emulating the Soviet intelligence officers he saw in the movies. Today, he holds a black belt in judo and is a national master in the similar Russian martial art of sambo. He also studied German at Saint Petersburg High School, and speaks the language fluently today.

In 1975, Putin earned a law degree from Leningrad State University, where he was tutored and befriended by Anatoly Sobchak, who would later become a political leader during the Glasnost and Perestroika reform period. As a college student, Putin was required to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but resigned as a member in December 1991. He would later describe communism as “a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization.”

After initially considering a career in law, Putin was recruited into the KGB (the Committee for State Security) in 1975. He served as a foreign counter-intelligence officer for 15 years, spending the last six in Dresden, East Germany. After leaving the KGB in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he returned to Russia where he was in charge of the external affairs of Leningrad State University. It was here that Putin became an advisor to his former tutor Anatoly Sobchak, who had just become Saint Petersburg’s first freely-elected mayor. Gaining a reputation as an effective politician, Putin quickly rose to the position of first deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg in 1994. 

Prime Minister 1999 

After moving to Moscow in 1996, Putin joined the administrative staff of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin . Recognizing Putin as a rising star, Yeltsin appointed him director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)—the post-communism version of the KGB—and secretary of the influential Security Council. On August 9, 1999, Yeltsin appointed him as acting prime minister. On August 16, the Russian Federation’s legislature, the State Duma , voted to confirm Putin’s appointment as prime minister. The day Yeltsin first appointed him, Putin announced his intention to seek the presidency in the 2000 national election.

While he was largely unknown at the time, Putin’s public popularity soared when, as prime minister, he orchestrated a military operation that succeeded resolving the Second Chechen War , an armed conflict in the Russian-held territory of Chechnya between Russian troops and secessionist rebels of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought between August 1999 and April 2009. 

When Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on December 31, 1999, under suspicion of bribery and corruption, the Constitution of Russia made Putin acting President of the Russian Federation. Later the same day, he issued a presidential decree protecting Yeltsin and his relatives from prosecution for any crimes they might have committed.    

While the next regular Russian presidential election was scheduled for June 2000, Yeltsin’s resignation made it necessary to hold the election within three months, on March 26, 2000. 

At first far behind his opponents, Putin’s law-and-order platform and decisive handling of the Second Chechen War as acting president soon pushed his popularity beyond that of his rivals.

On March 26, 2000, Putin was elected to his first of three terms as President of the Russian Federation winning 53 percent of the vote.

Shortly after his inauguration on May 7, 2000, Putin faced the first challenge to his popularity over claims that he had mishandled his response to the Kursk submarine disaster . He was widely criticized for his refusal to return from vacation and visit the scene for over two weeks. When asked on the Larry King Live television show what had happened to the Kursk, Putin’s two-word reply, “It sank,” was widely criticized for its perceived cynicism in the face of tragedy. 

October 23, 2002, as many as 50 armed Chechens, claiming allegiance to the Chechnya Islamist separatist movement, took 850 people hostage in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater. An estimated 170 people died in the controversial special-forces gas attack that ended the crisis. While the press suggested that Putin’s heavy-handed response to the attack would damage his popularity, polls showed over 85 percent of Russians approved of his actions.

Less than a week after the Dubrovka Theater attack, Putting clamped down even harder on the Chechen separatists, canceling previously announced plans to withdraw 80,000 Russian troops from Chechnya and promising to take “measures adequate to the threat” in response to future terrorist attacks. In November, Putin directed Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to order sweeping attacks against Chechen separatists throughout the breakaway republic.

Putin’s harsh military policies succeeded in at least stabilizing the situation in Chechnya. In 2003, the Chechen people voted to adopt a new constitution confirming that the Republic of Chechnya would remain a part of Russia while retaining its political autonomy. Though Putin’s actions greatly diminished the Chechen rebel movement, they failed to end the Second Chechen War, and sporadic rebel attacks continued in the northern Caucasus region.  

During the majority of his first term, Putin concentrated on improving the failing Russian economy, in part by negotiating a “grand bargain” with the Russian business oligarchs who had controlled the nation’s wealth since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Under the bargain, the oligarchs would retain most of their power, in return for supporting—and cooperating with—Putin’s government. 

According to financial observers at the time, Putin made it clear to the oligarchs that they would prosper if they played by the Kremlin rules. Indeed, Radio Free Europe reported in 2005 that the number of Russian business tycoons had greatly increased during Putin’s time in power, often aided by their personal relationships with him. 

Whether Putin’s “grand bargain” with the oligarchs actually “improved” the Russian economy or not remains uncertain. British journalist and expert on international affairs Jonathan Steele has observed that by the end of Putin’s second term in 2008, the economy had stabilized and the nation’s overall standard of living had improved to the point that the Russian people could “notice a difference.”

On March 14, 2004, Putin was easily re-elected to the presidency, this time winning 71 percent of the vote. 

During his second term as president, Putin focused on undoing the social and economic damage suffered by the Russian people during the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event he called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century.” In 2005, he launched the National Priority Projects designed to improve health care, education, housing, and agriculture in Russia.

On October 7, 2006—Putin’s birthday— Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and human rights activist, who as a frequent critic of Putin and had exposed corruption in the Russian Army and cases of its improper conduct in the Chechnya conflict, was shot to death as she entered the lobby of her apartment building. While Politkovskaya’s killer was never identified, her death brought criticism that Putin’s promise to protect the newly-independent Russian media had been no more than political rhetoric. Putin commented that Politkovskaya’s death had caused him more problems than anything she had ever written about him. 

In 2007, Other Russia, a group opposed to Putin led by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, organized a series of “Dissenters’ Marches” to protest Putin’s policies and practices. Marches in several cities resulted in the arrests of some 150 protestors who tried to penetrate police lines.

In the December 2007 elections, the equivalent of the U.S. mid-term congressional election, Putin’s United Russia party easily retained control of the State Duma, indicating the Russian people’s continued support for him and his policies.

The democratic legitimacy of the election was questioned, however. While some 400 foreign election monitors stationed at polling places stated that the election process itself had not been rigged, the Russian media’s coverage had clearly favored candidates of United Russia. Both the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that the elections were unfair and called on the Kremlin to investigate alleged violations. A Kremlin-appointed election commission concluded that not only had the election been fair, but it had also proven the “stability” of the Russian political system. 

With Putin barred by the Russian Constitution from seeking a third consecutive presidential term, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected president. However, on May 8, 2008, the day after Medvedev’s inauguration, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia. Under the Russian system of government, the president and the prime minister share responsibilities as the head of state and head of the government, respectively. Thus, as prime minister, Putin retained his dominance over the country’s political system. 

In September 2001, Medvedev proposed to the United Russia Congress in Moscow, that Putin should run for the presidency again in 2012, an offer Putin happily accepted.

Third Presidential Term 2012 to 2018 

On March 4, 2012, Putin won the presidency for a third time with 64 percent of the vote. Amid public protests and accusations that he had rigged the election, he was inaugurated on May 7, 2012, immediately appointing former President Medvedev as prime minister. After successfully quelling protests against the election process, often by having marchers jailed, Putin proceeded to make sweeping—if controversial—changes to Russia’s domestic and foreign policy.  

In December 2012, Putin signed a law prohibiting the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens. Intended to ease the adoption of Russian orphans by Russian citizens, the law stirred international criticism, especially in the United States, where as many as 50 Russian children in the final stages of adoption were left in legal limbo.   

The following year, Putin again strained his relationship with the U.S. by granting asylum to Edward Snowden, who remains wanted in the United States for leaking classified information he gathered as a contractor for the National Security Agency on the WikiLeaks website. In response, U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a long-planned August 2013 meeting with Putin. 

Also in 2013, Putin issued a set of highly controversial anti-gay laws outlawing gay couples from adopting children in Russia and banning the dissemination of material promoting or describing “nontraditional” sexual relationships to minors. The laws brought worldwide protests from both the LGBT and straight communities.  

In December 2017, Putin announced he would seek a six-year—rather than four-year—term as president in July, running this time as an independent candidate, cutting his old ties with the United Russia party. 

After a bomb exploded in a crowded Saint Petersburg food market on December 27, injuring dozens of people, Putin revived his popular “tough on terror” tone just before the election. He stated that he had ordered Federal Security Service officers to “take no prisoners” when dealing with terrorists.

In his annual address to the Duma in March 2018, just days before the election, Putin claimed that the Russian military had perfected nuclear missiles with “unlimited range” that would render NATO anti-missile systems “completely worthless.” While U.S. officials expressed doubts about their reality, Putin’s claims and saber-rattling tone ratcheted up tensions with the West but nurtured renewed feelings of national pride among Russian voters. 

On March 18, 2018, Putin was easily elected to a fourth term as President of Russia, winning more than 76 percent of the vote in an election that saw 67 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots. Despite the opposition to his leadership that had surfaced during his third term, his closest competitor in the election garnered only 13 percent of the vote. Shortly after officially taking office on May 7, Putin announced that in compliance with the Russian Constitution, he would not seek reelection in 2024. 

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland, in what was called the first of a series of meetings between the two world leaders. While no official details of their private 90-minute meeting were published, Putin and Trump would later reveal in press conferences that they had discussed the Syrian civil war and its threat to the safety of Israel, the Russian annexation of Crimea , and the extension of the START nuclear weapons reduction treaty. 

On February 23, 2022, Putin launched an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, which had officially declared itself an independent country on August 24, 1991. Putin justified the act with the false narrative that Ukraine was not a real country. That it “belongs” to Russia as part of a “Great Russia” and the “Russian World,” and that there is, according to Putin, no Ukrainian people, no Ukrainian language, and no separate Ukrainian history. 

After Russia launched its 2022 invasion, the United States, the European Union (EU), and other NATO member nations condemned Putin, substantially increased military, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine, and imposed a series of increasingly crippling financial and economic sanctions on Russia. In addition, hundreds of U.S. and other companies withdrew, suspended, or curtailed operations in or with Russia.

On February 8, 1994, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) accepted Ukraine into its Partnership for Peace, a collaborative arrangement open to all non-NATO European countries and post-Soviet states. Russia became a NATO member in June 1994 and conducted various cooperative activities with NATO, including joint military exercises, until 2014, when NATO formally suspended ties with the country. As the Cold War ended, Russia opposed the eastern expansion of NATO. However, thirteen former Soviet partnership members eventually joined the alliance.

Ukraine is not a NATO member. However, Ukraine is a NATO partner country, which means that it cooperates closely with NATO but it is not covered by the security guarantee in the Alliance’s founding treaty.

The invasion seemed to tarnish Putin’s image among the Russian people, as young citizens, along with middle-aged and even retired people, took to the streets to speak out against a military conflict ordered by their President—a decision in which, they claimed, they had no say.

Putin responded by shutting down public dissent against the attack on Ukraine. By the end of July 2022, a total of over 7,624 protesters had been detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began, according to an independent organization that tracks human rights violations in Russia.

During Putin’s third presidential term, allegations arose in the United States that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

A combined U.S. intelligence community report released in January 2017 found “high confidence” that Putin himself had ordered a media-based “influence campaign” intended to harm the American public’s perception of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton , thus improving the electoral chances of eventual election winner, Republican Donald Trump . In addition, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating whether officials of the Trump campaign organization colluded with high ranking Russian officials to influence the election. 

While both Putin and Trump have repeatedly denied the allegations, the social media website Facebook admitted in October 2017 that political ads purchased by Russian organizations had been seen by at least 126 million Americans during the weeks leading up to the election.

Vladimir Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva on July 28, 1983. From 1985 to 1990, the couple lived in East Germany where they gave birth to their two daughters, Mariya Putina and Yekaterina Putina. On June 6, 2013, Putin announced the end of the marriage. Their divorce became official on April 1, 2014, according to the Kremlin. An avid outdoorsman, Putin publicly promotes sports, including skiing, cycling, fishing, and horseback riding as a healthy way of life for the Russian people. 

While some say he may be the world’s wealthiest man, Vladimir Putin’s exact net worth is not known. According to the Kremlin, the President of the Russian Federation is paid the U.S. equivalent of about $112,000 per year and is provided with an 800-square foot apartment as an official residence. However, independent Russian and U.S. financial experts have estimated Putin’s combined net worth at from $70 billion to as much as $200 billion. While his spokespersons have repeatedly denied allegations that Putin controls a hidden fortune, critics in Russia and elsewhere remain convinced that he has skillfully used the influence of his nearly 20-years in power to acquire massive wealth. 

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin recalls the time his mother gave him his baptismal cross, telling him to get it blessed by a Bishop and wear it for his safety. “I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since,” he once recalled. 

As one of the most powerful, influential, and often-controversial world leaders of the past two decades, Vladimir Putin has uttered many memorable phrases in public. A few of these include: 

• “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.”
• “People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves.”
• “Russia doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. It destroys them.”
• “In any case, I’d rather not deal with such questions, because anyway it’s like shearing a pig—lots of screams but little wool.”
• “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days.” 
• “ Vladimir Putin Biography .” Vladimir Putin official state biography
• “ Vladimir Putin – President of Russia .” European-Leaders.com (March 2017)
• “ First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin .” The New York Times (2000)
• “ Putin’s Obscure Path From KGB to Kremlin .” Los Angeles Times (2000)
• “ Vladimir Putin quits as head of Russia's ruling party .” The Daily Telegraph (2002)
• “ Russian lessons .” Financial Times. September 20, 2008
• “ Russia: Bribery Thriving Under Putin, According To New Report .” Radio Free Europe (2005)
• Steele, Jonathan. “ Putin’s legacy is a Russia that doesn't have to curry favour with the west .” The Guardian, September 18, 2007
• Bohlen, Celestine (2000). “ YELTSIN RESIGNS: THE OVERVIEW; Yeltsin Resigns, Naming Putin as Acting President To Run in March Election .” The New York Times.
• Sakwa, Richard (2007). “Putin : Russia's Choice (2nd ed.).” Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9780415407656.
• Judah, Ben (2015). “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin.” Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300205220.
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Vladimir Putin Biography

Born: October 1, 1952 Leningrad, Russia Russian president

When Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister of Russia, very little was known about his background. This former Soviet intelligence agent entered politics in the early 1990s and rose rapidly. By August of 1999, ailing President Boris Yeltsin (1931–) appointed him prime minister. When Yeltsin stepped down in December of 1999, Putin became the acting president of Russia, and he was elected president to serve a full term on March 26, 2000.

Early life and education

Vladimir Putin was born on October 1, 1952, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. An only child, his father was a foreman in a metal factory and his mother was a homemaker. Putin lived with his parents in an apartment with two other families. Though religion was not permitted in the Soviet Union, the former country which was made up of Russia and other smaller states, his mother secretly had him baptized as an Orthodox Christian.

Work in the KGB

At Leningrad State University, Putin graduated from the law department in 1975 but instead of entering the law field right out of school, Putin landed a job with the KGB, the only one in his class of one hundred to be chosen. The branch he was assigned to was responsible for recruiting foreigners who would work to gather information for KGB intelligence.

In the early 1980s Putin met and married his wife, Lyudmila, a former teacher of French and English. In 1985 the KGB sent him to Dresden, East Germany, where he lived undercover as Mr. Adamov, the director of the Soviet-German House of Friendship, a social and cultural club. Putin appeared to genuinely enjoy spending time with Germans, unlike many other KGB agents, and respected the German culture.

Around the time Putin went to East Germany, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–) was beginning to introduce economic and social reforms (improvements). Putin was apparently a firm believer in the changes. In 1989 the Berlin Wall, which stood for nearly forty years separating East from West Germany, was torn down and the two united. Though Putin supposedly had known that this was going to happen, he was disappointed that it occurred amid chaos and that the Soviet leadership had not managed it better.

Russian politics

In 1990 Putin returned to Leningrad and continued his undercover intelligence work for the KGB. In 1991, just as the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart, Putin left the KGB with the rank of colonel, in order to get involved in politics. Putin went to work for Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg, as an aide and in 1994 became deputy mayor.

During Putin's time in city government, he reportedly helped the city build highways, telecommunications, and hotels, all to support foreign investment. Although St. Petersburg never grew to become the financial powerhouse that many had hoped, its fortunes improved as many foreign investors moved in, such as Coca-Cola and Japanese electronics firm NEC.

On to the Kremlin

In 1996, when Sobchak lost his mayoral campaign, Putin was offered a job with the victor, but declined out of loyalty. The next year, he was asked to join President Boris Yeltin's "inner circle" as deputy chief administrator of the Kremlin, the building that houses the Russian government. In March of 1999, he was named secretary of the Security Council, a body that advises the president on matters of foreign policy, national security, and military and law enforcement.

In August of 1999, after Yeltsin had gone through five prime ministers in seventeen months, he appointed Putin, who many thought was not worthy of succeeding the ill president. For one thing, he had little political experience; for another, his appearance and personality seemed boring. However, Putin increased his appeal among citizens for his role in pursuing the war in Chechnya. In addition to blaming various bombings in Moscow and elsewhere on Chechen terrorists, he also used harsh words in criticizing his enemies. Soon, Putin's popularity ratings began to soar.

Acting president of Russia

In December of 1999, Russia held elections for the 450-seat Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament (governing body). Putin's newly-formed Unity Party came in a close second to the Communists in a stunning showing. Though Putin was not a candidate in this election, he became the obvious front-runner in the upcoming presidential race scheduled for June of 2000.

On New Year's Eve in 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly stepped down as president, naming Putin as acting president. Immediately, Western news media and the U.S. government scrambled to create a profile of the new Russian leader. Due to Putin's secretive background as a KGB agent, there was little information. His history as a spy caused many Westerners and some Russians as well to question whether he should be feared as an enemy of the free world.

In Putin's first speech as acting president, he promised, "Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, the right to private property—these basic principles of a civilized society will be protected," according to a Newsweek report. In addition, Putin removed several of Yeltsin's loyalists and relatives from his cabinet.

Elected President

On March 26, 2000, Russians elected Putin out of a field of eleven candidates. After his election, Putin's first legislative move was to win approval of the Start II arms reduction treaty from the Duma. The deal, which was negotiated seven years earlier, involved decreasing both the Russian and American nuclear buildup by half. Putin's move on this issue was seen as a positive step in his willingness to develop a better relationship with the United States. In addition, one of Putin's earliest moves involved working with a team of economists to develop a plan to improve the country's economy. On May 7, 2000, Putin was officially sworn in as Russia's second president and its first in a free transfer of power in the nation's eleven-hundred-year history.

Putin, a soft-spoken and stone-faced man, keeps his personal life very private. In early 2000, an American publishing company announced that in May it would release an English-language translation of his memoirs, First Person, which was banned from publication in Russia until after the March 26 presidential election.

Putin has made great efforts to improve relations with the remaining world powers. In July 2001, Putin met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin (1926–) and the two signed a "friendship treaty" which called for improving trade between China and Russia and improving relations concerning U.S. plans for a missile defense system. Four months later, Putin visited Washington, D.C. to meet with President George W. Bush (1946–) over the defense system. Although they failed to reach a definite agreement, the two leaders did agree to drastically cut the number of nuclear arms in each country. Early in 2002, Putin traveled to Poland and became the first Russian president since 1993 to make this trip. Representatives of the two countries signed agreements involving business, trade, and transportation.

For More Information

Putin, Vladimir. First Person. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000.

Shields, Charles J. Vladimir Putin. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002.

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:.

Vladimir Putin's childhood explained - from 'miracle baby' to power-crazed president

Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, a city that had been under siege for 900 days in the Second World War. Putin was a street kid, small for his age and bullied

• 09:15, 23 Feb 2022
• Updated 10:12, 23 Feb 2022

The first time Vladimir Putin waged war it was against the rats which infested the corridors of his bleak boyhood home in a dilapidated Soviet apartment block.

Telling the story of those vermin now, he makes clear he won his battles against them, possibly using the story to illustrate how he overcame post-war devastation and poverty to succeed.

In First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait, published in 2000, he writes: “There were hordes of rats in the front entryway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks.

”Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner. It had nowhere to run. Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me. I was surprised and frightened. Now the rat was chasing me.

“Luckily, I was a little faster and I managed to slam the door shut in its nose. There, on that stair landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered.”

The anecdote may be part of his carefully curated narrative, but it gives us a glimpse into the making of the man who now has the world holding its breath.

Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, a city that had been under siege for 900 days in the Second World War. More than a million people had died of starvation, many families entirely wiped out.

In the war, Putin’s father, Vladimir, was away fighting, while his mother, Maria, almost starved to death. Putin writes: “Once my mother fainted from hunger. People thought she had died, and they laid her out with the corpses. Luckily Mama woke up in time and started moaning.”

His father was one of only four of the 28 men in his unit to come home from the war, and for the rest of his life limped because of shrapnel injuries.

The couple are believed to have lost their two older children, one to diphtheria during the war, the second from another childhood illness.

Vladimir Putin was a “miracle baby” who arrived late. His communal home was dire, shared with two other families.

His former school teacher Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich said: “There was no hot water, no bathtub. The toilet was horrendous. And it was so cold, awful.”

Putin was a street kid, small for his age and bullied so he had to toughen up fast.

Masha Gessen, author of The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise Of Vladimir Putin, says: “Putin’s parents worked pretty much around the clock, his mother various unskilled jobs, his father at a factory. He was left to his own devices. He hung out in the courtyard with other boys, like all children did.

“And he was often picked upon and bullied until he started studying Sambo, a version of martial arts, and then later switched to Judo so he could compete.”

He is now a black belt and likes the world to know it, some even referring to his inner circle as a “Judocracy”. Putin reflected in 2015: “50 years ago the Leningrad street taught me a rule: if a fight is inevitable you have to throw the first punch.”

Masha says: “He’s scrappy, very ambitious, very, very greedy.”

She says Putin’s doting parents fed that greed. He had a wristwatch as a teen – something his dad didn’t have. When they won a car they reportedly gave it to their student son.

Masha suggests by treating him as their “king”, Putin’s parents gave him a sense of entitlement. She said: “There’s a lot of proof he feels he is chosen now.”

The proof could include his sprawling “Putin’s Palace” home, and those photos of him riding horses bare-chested. More recently, making French President

Emmanuel Macron sit at the other end of a ridiculously long table says everything about his need to feel superior.

According to the Kremlin website, Putin wanted to work in intelligence “even before he finished school”, and volunteered at 16. He holds a law degree from Leningrad State University plus a doctorate in economics, and was picked from 100 or more students for the KGB.

Pavel Koshelev, a college classmate and fellow KGB officer, said: “His most outstanding trait, I would say, was his fighting spirit and his strong will to achieve his goals.’’

In the late 1980s, Putin was posted to Dresden, East Germany, reportedly to work in counter-espionage.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he rose to become head of the KGB’s successor, the FSB, and then Boris Yeltsin’s successor when he resigned in 1999.

Putin said his KGB career prepared him for presidency. That discipline is still clear today as he works 16 and 17-hour days, something which took its toll on his family life. He married Lyudmila Putina, a former air hostess, in the mid-1980s and doted on their two daughters.

After he and Lyudmila divorced in 2014, she reportedly said: “Our marriage is over due to the fact that we barely see each other. Vladimir is completely submerged in his work.”

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• 20th Century

10 Facts About Vladimir Putin

Lucy Davidson

02 feb 2022, @lucejuiceluce.

Vladimir Putin (born 1952) is the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, having led the country for more than 2 decades as either its Prime Minister or its President. His time in power has been characterised by territorial tensions in Eastern Europe, liberal economic reform, a crackdown on political freedoms and a cult of personality revolving around Putin’s ‘action man’ image.

Away from his public persona, Putin has lived a life of extremes: he grew up in poverty in 1950s and 1960s St Petersburg, for example, but now resides in a rural palace complex worth more than 1 billion dollars. And his personality is similarly marked by contrasts. Putin was a KGB officer during the Cold War and claims to be a ruthless black belt at judo, yet he also professes a sincere love for animals and an adoration of The Beatles.

Here are 10 facts about Vladimir Putin.

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1. He grew up in poverty

Putin’s parents married at 17. Times were tough: during World War Two , his father was injured and ultimately disabled by a grenade, and during the Siege of Leningrad his mother was trapped and nearly starved to death. Putin’s birth in October 1952 was preceded by the deaths of two brothers, Viktor and Albert, who died during the Siege of Leningrad and in infancy, respectively.

After the war, Putin’s father took a factory job and his mother swept streets and washed test tubes. The family lived in a communal apartment with several other families. There was apparently no hot water and lots of rats.

2. He was not a model student

In ninth grade, Putin was selected to study at Leningrad School No. 281, which only accepted the city’s brightest pupils. A Russian tabloid reportedly later found Putin’s gradebook. It stated that Putin “threw chalkboard erasers at the children”, “didn’t do his math homework”, “behaved badly during singing class” and “talks in class”. In addition, he was caught passing notes and often fought with his gym teacher and older students.

While at school, he became interested in a career with the KGB. Learning that the organisation didn’t take volunteers and instead hand-picked their members, he applied to law school as a path into being selected. In 1975, he graduated from Leningrad State University.

3. He has reportedly broken records in Judo

President Putin on a tatami at the Kodokan Martial Arts Palace in Tokyo, September 2000.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Putin has practiced judo since he was 11 years old, before turning his attentions to sambo (a Russian martial art) when he was 14. He won competitions in both sports in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and in 2012 was awarded eighth dan (a martial arts ranking system) of the black belt, which made him the first Russian to achieve the status. He has written books on the subject, co-authoring the book Judo with Vladimir Putin  in Russian, and  Judo: History, Theory, Practice in English.

However, Benjamin Wittes, editor of Lawfare and a black belt in taekwondo and aikido, has disputed Putin’s martial arts skill, stating that there is no video evidence of Putin displaying any noteworthy Judo skills.

4. He joined the KGB

Immediately after completing his law degree, Putin joined the KGB in an administrative position. He studied in Moscow at the KGB’s foreign intelligence institute under the pseudonym ‘Platov’. He served in the KGB for 15 years and travelled across Russia, and in 1985 was sent to Dresden in East Germany. He rose through the ranks of the KGB and eventually became a lieutenant colonel.

However, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down . Two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed and Putin left the KGB. This wasn’t to be the end of Putin’s dealings with the KGB, however: in 1998, he was appointed the head of the FSB, the reconstituted KGB.

5. After the KGB, he started his career in politics

After his career with the KGB, he held a position at Leningrad State University for a short while before moving into politics. He was a distinguished employee, and by 1994 had earned himself the title of Deputy Mayor under Anatoly Sobchak. After his mayorship came to an end, Putin moved to Moscow and joined the presidential staff. He started as a Deputy Head of Management in 1998, then moved to the head of the Federal Security Service, and by 1999 was promoted to Prime Minister.

Just before the turn of the century, the then-President Boris Yeltsin resigned and appointed Putin as Acting President. Yeltsin’s opponents had been preparing for an election in June 2000. However, his resignation resulted in the presidential elections taking place sooner, in March 2000. There, Putin won in the first round with 53% of the vote. He was inaugurated on 7 May 2000.

6. He loves the Beatles

In 2007, British photographer Platon was sent to take a portrait of Putin for Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ edition. As a way of making conversation, Platon stated, “I’m a big Beatles fan. Are you?” He then recounted that Putin stated, “I love the Beatles!” and said that his favourite song was Yesterday .

7. He owns a palace in a forest

The main gate of Putin’s Palace, near the village of Praskoveevka in Krasnodar Krai, Russia.

Putin’s enormous home, nicknamed ‘Putin’s Palace’, is an Italianate palace complex located on the coast of the Black Sea in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The complex contains a main house (with an area of nearly 18,000m²), an arboretum, a greenhouse, a helipad, an ice palace, a church, an amphitheatre, a guest house, a fuel station, an 80-metre bridge and a special tunnel inside the mountain with a tasting room.

Inside there is a swimming pool, spa, saunas, Turkish baths, shops, a warehouse, a reading room, a music lounge, a hookah bar, a theatre and cinema, a wine cellar, a casino and about a dozen guest bedrooms. The master bedroom is 260 m² in size. The cost of the build is estimated to be around 100 billion rubles ($1.35 billion) in 2021 prices.

8. He has at least two children

Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva in 1983. The couple had two daughters together, Maria and Katerina, who Putin rarely mentions and have never been seen by the Russian people. In 2013, the couple announced their divorce on mutual grounds, stating that they didn’t see each other enough.

Foreign tabloids have reported that Putin had at least one child with a “former rhythmic gymnastics champion turned lawmaker”, a claim which Putin denies.

9. He has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize twice

Putin persuaded Assad to surrender Syria’s weapons peacefully as opposed to the other option of aggressive intervention, likely because of his friendship with the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. For this, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

He was also nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination didn’t come from the Kremlin: instead, it was supposedly submitted by controversial Russian writer and public figure Sergey Komkov.

10. He loves animals

Putin photographed with Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe before a meeting. In July 2012, Akita Inu dog Yume was presented to Vladimir Putin by the authorities of the Japanese prefecture of Akita.

Putin owns a number of pet dogs, and reportedly loves being photographed with different animals. The many pictures of Putin with animals can be broadly divided into three categories: a loving pet owner with his many dogs; an impressive animal handler with horses, bears and tigers; and the rescuer of endangered species such as Siberian cranes and the Siberian bear.

He also pushes for laws for the better treatment of animals, such as a law that prohibits petting zoos inside malls and restaurants, prohibits the killing of stray animals and requires proper care for pets.

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Vladimir Putin Biography

Birthday: October 7 , 1952 ( Libra )

Born In: Saint Petersburg, Russia

Vladimir Putin is the current President of Russia. He is considered an autocrat with little respect for human rights and has been accused of ordering assassinations of his critics and opponents. Besides being the President, he has also served as the Prime Minister and was a foreign intelligence officer before entering politics. He was born in a middle class family and had a dream of becoming an intelligence officer since childhood. He realized this dream when he entered KGB , the Russian intelligence agency. He was posted in various places as an undercover agent. For a large part of his life, he served at the agency. Eventually, he got involved in political affairs of the country and resigned from KGB. He then, diligently worked for the welfare of the country and its people, which soon earned him recognition. Finally, when the then President of Russia Boris Yeltsin decided to step down from his post, he found no better successor than Vladimir Putin and appointed him as the President of the country. A few months later, the elections took place and there too, he emerged as the winner. The deft handling of issues with admirable efficiency led to his re-election for a second term to the office of President of Russia. Since as per Russian constitution, he was ineligible to run for presidency for the third consecutive term, Dmitry Medvedev ran for the office of the President and Putin became the Prime Minister. In 2012, when Medvedev's term ended, Vladimir Putin once again became the President for the third time. In 2018, he was re-elected for his fourth term as President.

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Also Known As: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

Age: 71 Years , 71 Year Old Males

Spouse/Ex-: Lyudmila Putina (1983–2014)

father: Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin

mother: Maria Ivanovna Shelomova

siblings: Albert Putin, Viktor Putin

children: Mariya Putina , Yekaterina Putina

Born Country: Russia

Presidents Political Leaders

political ideology: Political party - Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1975–1991), Our Home-Russia (1995–1999), Unity (1999–2001), Independent (1991–1995; 2001–2008), United Russia (2008–present)

Notable Alumni: Saint Petersburg Mining Institute

City: Saint Petersburg, Russia

Founder/Co-Founder: United Aircraft Corporation, State Council

education: Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg Mining Institute

awards: 2007 - Time's Person of the Year 2011 - Confucius Peace Prize

You wanted to know

What is vladimir putin's political party, what countries has vladimir putin visited during his presidency, what is vladimir putin's stance on foreign policy, what are some key events during vladimir putin's presidency, what is vladimir putin's background in terms of education and career.

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Vladimir Putin was born to Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin and Maria Ivanovna Putina on 7th October, 1952, in Saint Petersberg, Soviet Union.

During 1960-68, he attended the Primary School No. 193 located at Baskov Lane. He then joined the High School No. 281 , and even took interest in sports like sambo (a martial art form) and judo.

In 1970, he enrolled at the Leningrad State University Law Department, and as a student he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During the same time, he encountered the Russian politician Anatoly Sobchak.

He worked on his thesis entitled The Most Favored Nation Trading in International Law , and in 1975, he graduated from the university.

Soon after graduating from law school, Vladimir Putin entered the government-run intelligence agency KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti). At the beginning of 1980s, he was trained at the KGB School No. 1, Moscow.

He worked for the KGB agency’s Directorate Secretariat and then was employed at the Counterintelligence Division. He was again sent for training by KGB to Andropov Red Banner Institute to prepare him for his trip to Germany.

During the period 1985-90, he operated in the Dresden city of East Germany as an undercover agent. Vladimir’s hard work earned him the position of lieutenant colonel and eventually he became the senior assistant to the head of the department in the intelligence office.

In 1990, he traveled back to Leningrad and was appointed to the Leningrad State University as the rector, in which capacity he handled international relations.

He chaired the Committee for International Relations at St. Petersburg City Hall in 1991. A few years later, he joined the St. Petersburg City Government as the Deputy Chairman. Soon after joining the City Hall , he resigned from his post at the KGB.

He shifted to Moscow in the year 1996, along with his family, and there he was appointed to the Presidential Property Management Directorate as the Deputy Chief. The following year, he joined the Presidential Executive Office as the Deputy Chief of Staff and also Chief of Main Control Directorate.

He became the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office in 1998, and the same year, he joined office as the Director of the Federal Security Service. The following year, he became the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.

He was chosen as the Prime Minister of Russia by the then President of Russia Boris Yeltsin in 1999. By the end of that year, the then President stepped down, nominating Vladimir Putin as his successor for the post.

In March 2000, he was elected as the President of Russia and also served a second term after being re-elected to the office in 2004.

As per Russian constitution, he was ineligible to run for presidency for the third consecutive term. Hence, in 2008, Dmitry Medvedev ran for the office of the President and won the election. Medvedev appointed Vladimir Putin as the Prime Minister of Russia.

In 2011, the presidential term was extended from four years to six years. In 2012, Putin once again contested the presidential election and won by polling 64% of vote.

In 2018, he was re-elected for the fourth term as the President. He got 76% of votes and will be in office till 2024.

The 2010 Russian Wildfire had a huge aftermath. Crops were destroyed and thousands died due to the smog that was created by the fire. The President took special care to help people overcome this situation and he himself took charge of the reconstruction of homes and provided compensation to the victims.

In 2014, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian army into Ukrainian territory and annexed Crimea after a disputed referendum in which Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation. As a result of this, many countries slapped economic sanctions against Russia.   

In 2015, on request of the Syrian government, Vladimir Putin authorized the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War to help Syrian government in their fight against rebel and jihadist groups.

Putin has been accused by America of meddling in the 2016 American presidential elections. He has been accused of personally ordering a campaign to denigrate Hillary Clinton and to harm her electoral chances. But Putin has denied any interference in the American presidential election.

He received the Bronze Medal for Faithful Service to the National People’s Army issued by the German Democratic Republic in the year 1989.

In 2006, he was felicitated with the Grand-Croix (Grand Cross) by the President of France, Jacques Chirac. The following year, he was named Person of the Year by Time magazine.

Vladimir Putin was the recipient of the King Abdul Aziz Award in 2007 by Saudi King Abdullah. The same year, he was awarded with the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Award by the president of the UAE.

In 2011, he was awarded with an honorary doctorate by the University of Belgrade.

On 28th July 1983, Vladimir Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva after a courtship of about three years. The couple was blessed with two daughters, Maria and Yekaterina.

Over the years, Vladimir Putin has been romantically linked to several women, but these are regarded as rumors and Putin has denied such allegations. Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Shkrebneva announced their separation in 2013 and within a year, their divorce was finalized.

A street in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, has been named after him as Vladimir Putin Avenue . A peak in Tian Shan Mountains has also been named after this politician as Vladimir Putin Peak.

Vladimir Putin is known for his love of animals, particularly his black Labrador retriever named Konni.

Putin is a skilled judo practitioner and has been practicing the martial art since he was a teenager.

Despite his tough image, Putin has a playful side and has been known to showcase his sense of humor in public appearances.

Putin has a passion for adventure and has been photographed engaging in various outdoor activities such as fishing, horseback riding, and swimming.

Putin is multilingual and is fluent in several languages, including German and English.

See the events in life of Vladimir Putin in Chronological Order

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Vladimir Putin timeline: An enigmatic leader's rise to power

Feb. 5, 2014.

Vladimir Putin was a virtual unknown when he arrived on the political stage in August 1999. And even after many years in the public eye, Russia's president continues to be a man of many contrasts and layers. His personality, underneath a finely groomed public image, can be tough to fully grasp. Critics have accused him of leading an increasingly authoritarian regime that flouts electoral law and silences dissent. In 2010, demonstrators flocked to Moscow to protest what they deemed to be a fraudulent parliamentary election.

While Putin's popularity rate holds steady, he has faced criticism for his controversial anti-gay laws and treatment of political prisoners. International observers meanwhile have scrutinized his backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his granting of asylum to Edward Snowden. Select the links below to learn more about his life and career.

Vladimir Putin was born on Oct. 7, 1952 in St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad.

He and his parents shared a room in a hardscrabble communal apartment. Vladimir, Putin's father, worked as a factory foreman, among other jobs.

"I come from an ordinary family, and this is how I lived for a long time, nearly my whole life," Putin is quoted as saying on his official website.

Putin went on to get his degree in international law and economics from Leningrad State University in 1975.

Putin attends an Orthodox Christmas ceremony in 2011 in Turginovo, the village where his parents were baptized. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Reuters)

After graduating from university, Putin decided on a career in the intelligence service.

He joined the KGB in the mid-1970s, working in the counterintelligence unit for a time. There, he tracked the whereabouts of foreign visitors in Leningrad, among other duties.

Putin climbed the ladder of command, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was posted to Dresden, East Germany, in the mid-1980s, staying until the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Shortly after returning to the Soviet Union in 1990, Putin took a post at Leningrad State University. The following year, he resigned from the spy service.

(Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty)

Entering politics

Putin began his bureaucratic career with the Leningrad city council in 1991. Three years later, he was a top aide to the city's mayor, the liberal but often controversial Anatoly Sobchak.

He moved with his family to Moscow in 1996, holding posts of increasing responsibility within Boris Yeltsin's government.

By 1998, he was named head of the federal security service, the KGB's successor as spy agency.

A little more than a year later, Yeltsin named Putin as Russia's prime minister and anointed him as his chosen successor.

That preference would be put to the test when Yeltsin made a surprise exit from politics on Dec. 31, 1999.

(Alexei Nikolsky/AFP/Getty)

President Putin

Putin, now the acting president, was elected to the post on a full-time basis in March 2000.

"We want our Russia to be a free, prosperous, flourishing, strong and civilized country, a country that its citizens are proud of and that is respected internationally," he said in his inauguration speech.

Putin was re-elected to a second term in 2004.

During these two terms, his administration butted heads with powerful oligarchs and media tycoons who had prospered in the post-Soviet years.

Putin also faced two deadly hostage-takings in 2002 (Dubrovka theatre) and 2004 (Beslan school), both blamed on Chechnyan insurgents.

But as the economy grew rapidly, fuelled at least in part by rising oil prices, Putin remained popular as his term wound down in 2007.

(Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty)

• 'Tandemocracy'

Putin was constitutionally barred from running for a third term in 2008.

So he stepped aside in favour of Dmitry Medvedev, pictured at right, a former deputy prime minister and Putin loyalist.

Medvedev easily won election, then nominated Putin to be his prime minister.

Russian analysts spoke of a "tandemocracy," a new arrangement where power was shared between the two levels of government.

When Medvedev's term expired in 2012, Putin stepped forward to stand for the presidency. Medvedev became his prime minister.

Tens of thousands of Russians protested in the streets in 2011 and 2012, claiming vote fraud on the part of the administration and suppression of freedom of speech and other democratic rights.

(Dmitry Astakhov /AFP/Getty)

Personal life

Putin had two brothers who died young. He was raised as an only child.

He met his future wife through a mutual friend. Lyudmila Shkrebneva, pictured at right, had been a flight attendant on a domestic airline. They married in 1983 but in 2013 the couple announced they were divorcing.

The Putins have two daughters: Maria, born in 1985 and Katerina, born in 1986. But they keep a low profile and are rarely seen in an official capacity.

"Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is," Lyudmila is quoted as saying on Putin's official website.

Putin also reportedly has a soft spot for animals and is photographed often with dogs, horses and even tigers.

A sporting sort

In recent years, Putin has become the king of the sporty photo-op.

He has, quite famously, been photographed without his shirt or engaged in any number of macho activities to fine-tune his "superman" image.

Even when the cameras are away, Putin is said to be a sporting sort.

Martial arts are a particular passion. An accomplished judoka, Putin also holds a black belt in karate.

Putin also takes to the slopes, seen often on skis at Krasnaya Polyana, the home of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.

• Provocateur

Putin has never shied away from making controversial decisions in his domestic and foreign policy. At home, Putin introduced anti-gay legislation that forbids gay couples from adopting children. It also bans propagandizing "non-traditional" relationships to minors. These laws spurred international condemnation and calls for boycotts of the Sochi Olympics.

Observers in the West have also long criticized Putin's alliance with Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad. Tensions ratcheted up in late 2013 after it was alleged that al-Assad used chemical weapons against rebel forces. Amid threats of a U.S. strike against Syria, Putin helped broker a plan in which Syria agreed to surrender its chemical weapon stockpile.

Putin also made the controversial decision in August 2013 to grant asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Relations with the U.S. have remained chilly.

(Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti, Presidential Press Service, AP)

• Family life

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What's Hiding in Putin's Family History?

Chris Monday is associate professor of Russian History at Dongseo University, South Korea.

In 1949, Mikhail Putin visits a worker club at the Red Vyborzhets factory in Leningrad with his former coworker (in uniform) Boris Kruglov. Above is a famous painting of Putin signing the first contract [dogovor] for socialist competition in 1929.

“Who is Mr. Putin?” This question, first posed in 1999, remains unanswered. Married? Children? Even basic information on Russia’s president is a state secret. Kremlin propaganda trumpets Vladimir’s humble origins, but offers meager details. For example, on October 27, 2022, Putin claimed his working class background allowed him to “delicately feel the pulse of common people.” 

I question this legend by asserting that Putin benefited from a familial connection to a prominent member of the Soviet elite, Mikhail Eliseevich Putin (1894–1969). Mikhail helped establish “socialist competition,” a crucial institution for Stalinist modernization whereby workers were encouraged to contend for social recognition instead of wages. Once a “name familiar to all Soviets,” Mikhail Putin is a forgotten figure, and this is no coincidence.

The nineteenth-century thinker Marquis de Coustine held that Russia was a nation that strives to forget. George Orwell used the imagery of “memory holes” to describe Stalinist history. For Hannah Arendt,  “the only rule of which everybody in a totalitarian state may be sure is that the more visible government agencies are, the less power they carry, and the less is known of the existence of an institution, the more powerful it will ultimately turn out to be.” Thus Russian constitutions and political parties are facades: real power resides, in the ruling families.  Dynastic bloodlines are studiously concealed from public scrutiny.

Vladimir Putin, who now fights a war to prevent what he calls a “rewriting of history,” pathologically fears any examination into his own family. Since he became president, even the blandest of biographies have to be cleared by Kremlin handlers. Aleksey Navalny sits in prison over his “rude” investigations into Putin’s love life. In a 2020 interview, the journalist Andrei Kolesnikov, a main source for Putinology, could not say whether Putin had re-married: “I honestly don’t know, and it’s better not to know.”  In Orwellian fashion, all the parish registers down to the sixteenth-century that mention Putin are off limits to researchers. Clearly, much is being hidden.

One taboo topic is Mikhail Putin. I have pieced together his biography from archival sources, interviews, Soviet newspapers and books. Apart from the reluctance of Russians to discuss this man on record, my investigation was made difficult because of Soviet falsifications in which Mikhail willingly participated. While Stalinist propaganda depicted Mikhail Putin as a vanguard Leninist, he was in reality a son of rural Russia.

Mikhail Putin: from Wrestling to Socialist Competition

According to Aleksandr Putin, the sole family chronicler and the President’s cousin, the Putins form a tight-knit clan [rod] who today number around 3000. All hail from Tver, a rural province that lies between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Putins were serfs who were tied to patrimony-estates [ votchinas ]. A family legend holds that a smallpox outbreak in 1771 wiped out all the Putin line except a 13-year-old, Alesha. By end of the nineteenth century, the small Putin clan remained centered in a lightly populated region of Tver. The parish records for the local Pokrovskyaya  church  record a mere 148 births for the  year 1910. The Tver villages inhabited by the Putin clan were small communities where everyone knew one another.

The Putin men, starting with Ivan Petrovich (1845–1918), the President’s paternal great-grandfather, were migrant workers who established a family-association ( Artel) that supplied workers for restaurants in St. Petersburg. Establishing connections in the city, Ivan was followed by Spiridon, the President’s grandfather, and Mikhail Eliseevich, respectively. Mikhail’s father was a switchman for the Nikolaivskii Railroad at the Bezhetsk Station in Tver, about 140 km from the Putin homeland, Pominovo.  With nine siblings, Misha, born on November 8, 1894, started work at age nine helping his father. Along the way, Misha received a few years of elementary education, presumably at the local Aleksando-Mariinskaya Church  which had a total of 14 students.  At twelve, Mikhail began traveling to St. Petersburg, lodging with Vladimir’s grandfather, Spiridon, on Gorokhovo Street. Born in Pominovo, Tver, at age sixteen, Spiridon  apprenticed under a relative as a cook at the swanky Astoria. Thanks to Spiridon, Misha became a bus-boy at the near-by cafe of Jean Cubat.

As a teenager, the muscular Mikhail lugged cargo for a longshoreman artel in the rough-and-tumble beer manufacturing docks. During breaks, he would wrestle peasant-style ( bor’ba na opoiaskakh ). Local sportsmen noticed Putin and invited him to work out at Sanitas, a gym precursor. Frequented by the great wrestlers of the era, Sanitas employed scientific methods developed by physiologist Peter Lesgaft, who wrote: “mental and physical activities should be in complete harmony, for only then is it possible to fully attain self-awareness.” Successful wrestlers gained fame doing tricks in the circus for semi-literate workers. Mikhail Putin, a middleweight, never reached Olympian heights, but fought some of the famous wrestlers of the era. The lads at the docks began calling Putin “Mishka the Wrestler.”

During the Civil War, as trade froze up, the dock artel organized show matches. In Tomsk, the workers wanted to see who could last the longest against the legendary Ivan Piddubny. Putin, out of fear, retreated. Piddubny, smiling, pulled him aside and told him: “Why are you chickening out? [ Chto tikaish’? ] Scary, yes, but fight!” [1] Putin took his advice to heart and lasted seven minutes in the ring against this Samson.

Mikhail Putin (second from left) with his brigade at Red Vyborzhets in 1929. [ Nedeli , nom 10, 1980 p.8]

Mikhail Putin’s training was interrupted by war: he served in the Red Army from May 1920 to May 1922. In 1923, Mikhail Putin became a furnace stoker at a war-ravaged Leningrad factory, Red Vyborzhets. This factory, capable of producing a multitude of products at short notice, was crucial not only for industrialization, but also for the state propaganda. Notably, vanguard-workers forged the Lenin statue at the Finland Station.

The Bolsheviks soon faced the grim reality of a Marxist revolution in a peasant land of drunkenness and illiteracy. Putin, a “half-proletarian,” became quickly valued by Party bosses. Working the furnace, Putin drank 40 cups of water per shift to endure the heat. Between shifts, hearty Mikhail organized wrestling matches, thus gaining authority ( avtoritet) among his illiterate mates. Impressed, the factory Party supervisor made him an agitator.

The Bolshevik conundrum was how to transform rowdy peasants into proletarians. What was needed was a way to present factory life in a fun, theatrical light. In Stalinist fashion, the solution would be found by supposedly turning back to Lenin.  According to Lenin’s essay “How to Organize Competition” workers must initiate a ruthless terror. The bourgeoisie were “parasites” who “must be dealt with mercilessly.” Stalin had “How to Organize Competition” published in Pravda in 1929 to justify forced industrialization. Lenin in his pamphlet suggested the Bolsheviks experiment with different methods to motivate the “half-proletarians.”

Although Putin’s effort was one out of many, Red Vyborzhets was canonized to become the template for industrialization. According to legend, later taught to every Soviet schoolchild, Putin read Lenin’s work to his brigade. “So great was the impression of Lenin’s simple words that everyone was lost in thought.” The workers exclaimed: “How can Leninist thoughts be realized?” There was a heated dispute, but Putin remembered the advice of Piddubny: “Don’t chicken out!”

Putin suggested: “Let’s write a contract! We will compete with each other, and challenge our fellows.”

“And win a prize?” A fellow worker, Kruglov, simplistically exclaimed.

“It’s not who wins,” Putin objected, “this is not our principle. But to finish the job faster, better.” Putin found a student notebook and drew up the first contract of socialist competition on March 15, 1929.   

In reality, this worker initiative was staged-managed from above. The Party sent skilled propagandists to Vyborzhezs to concoct a story.  At first, 186 workers, under strict supervision, were to “compete.” The Party bosses asked skilled machine operators to formalize their obligations in a written contract, but they refused. By April, the Party had browbeaten several brigades to sign contracts. Putin’s brigade was the only one that agreed to wage reductions. They signed, not in March, but on 13 May.

Stalin soon proclaimed, “competition is a communist method of building socialism based on the maximum activity of millions of workers.” Indeed, this “grass-roots initiative” was a Stalinist masterstroke: Actual proletarians, professionals, who realized that “socialist competition” was preposterous and counter-productive, were marginalized. To boot, many of these seasoned workers were Trotskyites. Young provincials, such as Putin, would be elevated through “competition” while owing their allegiance to Stalin. Thus, Stalin forged a pivotal political base.

Socialist competition fostered a carnival atmosphere that focused on social recognition rather than economics. A key to acclimatizing peasants to factory life, competition spread thought the socialist world, and is still prominent in North Korea.  The name “Putin” entered the Ukrainian discourse thanks to “sotsialistychne zmahannia.”

Mikhail Putin was the model for Ivan Shadr’s sculpture "Cobblestone - the Weapon of the Proletariat" (1927)

While not the “initiator” of competition, Mikhail Putin was no mere cog in the machine. The athletic Putin embodied the Bolshevik ideal of the “new” worker. A shirtless Putin served as the model for the I.D. Shadr sculpture “Cobblestone: Weapon of the Proletariat,” a 1927 glorification of macho proletarians. Sergei Kirov, who voiced worries about the influx of unruly peasants to the factories, would have found Putin an invaluable enforcer. Mikhail Putin received visits from Kirov who was instrumental in propagating socialist competition.

After “initiating” socialist competition, Putin was soon entrusted with another sensitive mission, agitating for collectivization. In fall 1930, Putin’s brigade left for a village, Nizhnee Chuevo, in Tambov. Putin went to the houses of the poorest peasants to explain the benefits of collectivization. In true Putin style, Mikhail embellished his tale by recounting how he was attacked by three wolfhounds unleashed by the kulaks.

Mikhail Putin was well compensated for his services. In 1931, he was awarded the Soviets’ highest honor, the Order of Lenin. Graduating from the School of Trade Unions in 1933, he managed a Leningrad construction trust. Moving into an elite apartment, dubbed “fairy tale,” next to the Kirov Theater, Mikhail married a beautiful young woman, 16 years his junior. During a pivotal (and still enigmatic) moment in Soviet history, Putin in 1934 chaired Sergei Kirov’s funeral. This, no doubt, endowed him with a powerful aura.

During the war, Mikhail Putin heroically supervised construction projects in Leningrad, often close to the front lines. Even during wartime, Mikhail returned to his factory, Vyborzhets, to celebrate militarized anniversaries of Socialist Competition.

After World War II, Mikhail Putin became a trusted elder. In Pravda he was lionized along with the miner Alexei Stakhanov.  While Stakhanov’s debauchery so angered the Party that he was stripped of his Moscow furnishings and quietly retuned to the Donbass, Putin, living “a humble life,” continued agitating up to age 75.  Unlike other labor heroes, Putin was consulted by scholars.  A typical propaganda piece relates: “Time passed and the labor veterans aged, but they never forget their factories. A gray-haired man with the Order of Lenin on his chest often visited Vyborzhets: Putin. The shop was changing before his eyes: no cramped, dark cells anymore.  Powerful, high-performance tube mills stand along the wide, bright aisles: Putin’s profession has disappeared.” Putin became known for his impassioned talks.

Mikhail Putin, a Leningrad Construction Boss (with the Order of Lenin)

Putin thus became a valuable tool for indoctrination. “The participation of the veterans of the Revolution and labor […] is extremely important in educating working youth on revolutionary and labor traditions.”  University students would be bused to Vyborzhets and “introduced to the latest equipment” and sometimes Putin himself.  On November 25, 1958, on the eve of the 21st Party Congress at the storied Tauride Palace, 1,500 people gathered for a meeting broadcast by radio that showcased Putin.  In encyclopedias, “Putin” appeared next to Alexander Pushkin. A  “1929” installment of the Soviet TV program Our Biography (1978) and a film Spring of Labor (1975) focused on Mikhail.

MIKHAIL AND VLADIMIR  

During the famine years of the 30s, as a way for Mikhail Putin to return a favor, Spiridon (the President’s grandfather) was set up in Moscow at the Gorki Palace to cook for Party bosses, including Stalin. [1] Instead of moving in with Spiridon, the President’s father Vladimir and his wife Maria left Tver for Leningrad, presumably because of Mikhail. During the blockade, Putin’s mother, according to the President, “lived with a relative on the embankment of the Fontanka River.” This, assuredly, would be with Mikhail Putin. In 1942, his apartment at the Skazka House was destroyed by bombing so that Mikhail moved to a nearby apartment, at 109 Fontanka St. Off and on, Vladimir’s family continued living with “relatives” until Vladimir landed a good job at the Egorov factory and they were given an apartment on Baskov Lane. (In “yet another coincidence, to which we have become accustomed,” Russian state-controlled media reported in 2004 that Mikhail Putin’s grandson, Viktor, was living on Baskov Lane.) We know that relatives of Mikhail’s wife became well acquainted with both the President’s father and grandfather. Vladimir talked little with his father, who was scarred by the war. But he used to visit a “relative”—perhaps Mikhail?—who recounted family history (by 1995, around one hundred Putins lived in St Petersburg, but from 1930 to 1970, there were only two or three Putin households in the city).

While nepotism was officially discouraged, the Soviets did promote “worker dynasties.” Propaganda articles highlighted the “wonderful” Vyborzhets families. Mikhail Putin was regarded as a paterfamilias of the “school of communist labor.” At Vyborzhets, according to Soviet propaganda, family dynasties enjoyed the “authority and deep respect of the collective. The display of such glorious labour traditions of hereditary working families in lecture and propaganda work is important in educating young people and instilling in them a love of work.” Mikhail’s efforts to guide struggling Vladimir would thus have received official blessing. Under the radar, nepotism became entrenched in the Party ranks as seen with Leonid Brezhnev’s own daughter, Galina.

Inter-generational sports was also a part of Soviet indoctrination. Mikhail “kept in touch with his native factory,” helping to build a good club and stadium.  From time to time, Mikhail met his old Sanitas wrestling mate Sergei Dashkevich (1896–1953). Dashkevich took Judo courses under the legendary Vasily Oshchepkov. In order to set oneself up teaching Judo in Leningrad, it would certainly have been helpful to be connected with someone with Putin’s sway. Mikhail Putin may have been instrumental in helping Dashkevich’s pupil, Anatolii Rakhlin establish the Judo Club currently located across the street from Vyborzhets factory. In the 1960s Soviet police state, the idea of a Judo (or Sambo) club, directed by a Jew and open to the public, would have been unheard of. Tellingly, Rakhlin’s club was not in some basement but was first located in the renowned Yusupov Palace, the site of Rasputin’s murder, and a four-minute walk from Mikhail’s house. This unique club was named “Pipe-builder” ( Trubostroitel’ )—Mikhail’s profession.

Times had changed: in place of peasant-brawlers, cultural heroes became scientists and scholars. Vladimir was estranged from his father and adrift at school. It is reasonable to assume that he would have thrown himself at the chance to follow in the footsteps of the iconic Misha the Wrestler. Certainly, martial arts shaped Putin’s personality. This straightened out the spoiled Vladimir, but training and the 40-minute trolleybus commute left little time for study. Rakhlin, acknowledging Putin’s limited academic potential, recommended that he enter community technical college ( Vt uz ); at school Putin had received many Cs ( troiki ) which would have barred him from entering  university.

Instead, Putin inexplicably got in the international division of the law faculty at Leningrad University, a notorious bastion of golden youth. Here students interacted with foreigners, read banned “petty-bourgeois” scholars, and took subjects such as “State Law in Bourgeois Countries.” All this was strictly limited to “verified” youth, and certainly not open to a nobody who was also a brawler and who fraternized with Jews, at a time when the 1967 Arab-Israeli War had caused a wave of anti-Semitism. Clearly, Putin’s entrance required connections ( blat). It must have been Mikhail Putin who pulled the strings. Mikhail, old Leningraders whisper, wrote the required recommendation letter for Putin to enter the KGB. [1] Mikhail Putin, who died in 1969, was lionized in the front pages of Pravda : few would question the last wishes of this legendary man. According to Dmitrii Gantserov, a recruiter working in the 3rd department of the 5th Chief Directorate of the KGB, Putin inexplicably, from his freshman year, was considered a prime candidate out of an already elite group of law faculty students. The Leningrad KGB headquarters gave a green light to Putin’s candidacy based on a review of family relations ( proverka dal’nikh rodstvennikov ). For the final acceptance, during Putin’s last year of study in 1974, Gantserov was ordered to make a thorough review of Putin’s family background by personally interviewing family members (without naming himself, Vladimir Putin himself has admitted that connections ( blat ) are what made a KGB career in those days). The shadow of Mikhail would continue to give Putin a leg up. Key members of the Putin elite such as Valentina Matvienko would have heard Grigorii Romanov, the first secretary in Leningrad, herald Mikhail Putin as a hero who “our whole country follows today.”

As is the case for the majority of post-socialist societies, the leader’s princeling status is essential for acting as guardian and arbitrator over the ruling dynasties. This is what drove Putin’s rise to power. Amid a reactionary backlash, Putin protected the legacy of his former boss, the Mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoli Sobchak, as well the business and political interests of his wife, Liudmila Narusova, and daughter Kseniia. Based on this reputation, Valentin Yumashev, Tat’iana Yeltsin, and other members of Boris Yeltsin’s family urged the president to select Putin as successor in 1999.

As with the President’s appearance and gait, Vladimir’s career closely hews to Mikhail’s: from macho wrestler, to wily political insider, to Party sage. The model of socialist competition—the notion that political theatre can replace trade-union politics and market forces—epitomizes Putin’s authoritarianism. Facing turmoil in his war with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin continues to turn to the people he trusts, his Leningrad Judo partners and their children.        

[1] In 2022, Putin named as his mentors: two school teachers, Tamara Chizhova and Vera Gurevich, and his trainer Anatoli Rakhlin. None of these would be able to provide a recommendation authoritative enough to get into the KGB.

[1] In paranoid Russian society, the leader’s cook is no humble job. Putin’s chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is a critical member of the elite.

[1] In strikingly similar language, Vladimir Putin often tells school children that his mentor, Anatoly Rakhlin, urged him to “fight to the end.”

Putin Can’t Keep His Private Life Private

Russian journalists and activists have recently obtained extraordinary access to the president’s inner circle.

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Vladimir Putin would like you to know that he plays hockey. Before he invaded Ukraine, Russia’s 71-year-old president regularly competed in public exhibitions with professional athletes (whose job was clearly to let him score). He insists that the war hasn’t kept him from playing privately, even though it’s required subbing out athletes for bodyguards.

Putin would also like Alina Kabaeva to know that he plays hockey. A former gymnast, Kabaeva has been rumored to be Putin’s romantic partner for more than a decade; their relationship is an open secret in Russia. But according to a recent investigation published by the Dossier Center, a Russian opposition media group, the couple take extra precautions when Putin invites her to his rink: She watches him play from a separate box, out of sight of Putin’s staff, hidden behind smoked glass.

Putin will broadcast anything from his personal life that burnishes his image as a strongman. (Hockey is one of many athletic exploits that he brags about.) But he zealously guards everything else, even if it means concealing a woman in a box.

The report from the Dossier Center, which is financed by the exiled businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, describes in detail the sheltered lives of Putin, Kabaeva, and their purported kids, whose existence Putin has long denied. Even the children he’s willing to acknowledge publicly—the two daughters he had with his ex-wife—live under assumed names. But in recent years, journalists and activists have obtained unprecedented access to Putin’s inner circle, a massive failure on the part of his security services.

Read: That time I was a Russian propagandist

The private lives of Russian and Soviet leaders have almost always spilled into public view, becoming subjects of study for historians or grist for national mockery. But they can usually keep their secrets at least until they leave office. Putin hasn’t been so lucky.

Kabaeva was once known as Russia’s “Golden Girl.” Walk around Moscow and you’ll still find posters celebrating her 2004 Olympic gold medal. But now, at age 41, she lives almost entirely in Putin’s shadow, reportedly residing in his palace in the freezing northern town of Valdai. A pop song named after her includes the line, “she is dancing there, behind a little invisible door.” It’s the same door that hides nearly everyone in Putin’s orbit.

“Kabaeva must have thought she would become a queen, but turned out a prisoner,” Nina Khrushcheva, an international-affairs professor at the New School, in New York, told me. “This is the Kremlin’s tragedy.”

The author of the Dossier Center report, Ilya Rozhdestvensky, described to me the “surreal” schemes that Putin has in place to protect his personal life. Guests have to quarantine before seeing him or his family, sometimes for weeks, and his children are moved around the palace grounds only by car. “But at the same time,” Rozhdestvensky said, “there are many signs of security negligence: People can sneak into the residence with cellphones.” He told me that he and his team managed to corroborate some of their reporting with photos of Putin’s sons that had been posted on social media by his own employees and guests.

The president’s obsession with privacy might be explained in part by how much Russians now know about the personal life of his favorite dictator, Joseph Stalin. Entire movies and documentaries have been made about Stalin’s ill-fated wife, Nadezhda. One night at dinner, Stalin was flirting with another woman by rolling bread into little balls and throwing them into her cleavage. When Nadezhda noticed, he rolled a ball of tobacco and threw it at her face. The next morning, she was found dead in her bed with gunshot wounds. The official cause of death was suicide.

As with Stalin, many artists have portrayed Putin in their work. But they’ve largely avoided the president’s personal life. Erika Sheffer, who wrote a play called Vladimir that premiered this month in New York, told me that Putin struck her as “not particularly complicated—petty, self-interested, determined to retain power and amass money.” Her play depicts several major political events during Putin’s tenure while steering clear of his private life. “Great drama requires complexity and contradiction. It requires humanity, and I don’t see that in him.”

Mikhail Gorbachev was the rare case of a Soviet leader whose private life endeared him to the public. In Moscow in 2021, at one of the final rehearsals of a play about him and his wife, Raisa, he was in the audience to hear the standing ovation. Raisa Gorbacheva was the Kremlin’s only truly public first lady. Many Russians loved her—a fact Putin seems not to have grasped. “Putin thinks that Gorbachev’s beautiful, strong, and active wife, Raisa, was hated by ordinary people,” Maria Morina, a Russian filmmaker, told me. “He does not want Kabaeva to be the focus of gossip.”

That fear isn’t completely unfounded. Gossip about Kabaeva erupted in 2008, when a recently opened newspaper, the Moscow Correspondent , published an article asserting that Putin was preparing to marry her at a royal palace in St. Petersburg. Putin denied the report, denouncing its authors and their “erotic fantasies.” The paper closed soon after, a signal to Russia’s journalists that Putin’s personal life was off-limits.

Gal Beckerman: Five tiny pieces of paper

But secrets kept coming out. The opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison earlier this year, founded an online outlet that has reported on real estate that Putin seems to have purchased for Kabaeva’s family. Three years ago, Navalny released a video investigation into Putin’s purported Black Sea estate, which has been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube. Last year, his team published a report that included records of Putin’s and Kabaeva’s matching itineraries. Journalists at independent Russian outlets such as Dossier , Project Media , Meduza , The Insider , and others have continued to probe the relationship. Some found a private railroad that Kabaeva reportedly uses to travel to and from Putin’s palace in Valdai.

Exactly how many children the couple have is unclear. Some say two, others three. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Kabaeva gave birth to one of them in Switzerland in 2015. According to Dossier, that child was a boy named Ivan, now 9 years old. He likes playing chess online, Rozhdestvensky told me, which suggests that he may have access to the outside world. Wi-Fi could be a mixed blessing for Ivan. The internet is a big place. It includes the International Criminal Court’s warrant for his father’s arrest. It also includes allegations that his father has stolen Ukrainian children.

Rozhdestvensky called his investigation “Succession,” after the television series about children fighting over their father’s empire. I asked Timur Olevsky, the editor of The Insider , what that fight might look like among Putin’s multiple sets of children. “Russia will probably suffer from decades of conflicts, like the War of Roses,” he told me, only half-kidding. “For now, Putin’s kids will continue to live as recluses in a golden cage.”

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Putin signs law granting immunity to criminal defendants who join the army

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law Wednesday that will allow criminal defendants to skip prosecution and potential prison time if they enlist in the army.

The bill was originally approved by the Russian Supreme Court and Parliament before Putin stamped the measure, which could potentially place 20,000 new soldiers on the front lines in the war against Ukraine, according to reporting from the Russian independent outlet Important Stories .

“Of the approximately 60,000 accused persons, 40 percent are expected to be ‘recruited,’” a Russian Defense Ministry official told reporters.

Individuals seeking immunity must sign a contract to join Russia’s invading forces in Ukraine, in what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation.”

Since early in the war, Russia has recruited convicted prisoners or those under investigation to join the armed forces. The Washington Post has reported on instances of previously imprisoned soldiers serving on the battlefield and returning home only to reoffend.

Putin has continually expanded what was already among the largest armies in the world. Last month, he ordered the regular size of the Russian army to be increased by 180,000 troops to a total of 1.5 million, which would make it second only to China.

The move, which will take effect on Dec. 1, was the third time Putin expanded the army’s size since launching Russia’s war on Ukraine in February 2022.

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As Russia holds elections, Putin opposition fights to survive and adjust to life after Navalny

For days after the funeral of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, thousands of people continued to line up outside the cemetery in southern Moscow waiting to lay flowers at his grave.

They came to honor the Kremlin's most formidable critic, defying the intimidating presence of police and fears of arrest. Navalny's grave eventually disappeared under a 6-foot mound of thousands of carnations and roses.

The funeral became the largest public expression of dissent in Russia in the two years since President Vladimir Putin launched a suffocating crackdown following his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Moscow, large crowds chanted slogans against Putin and the war, unheard since the first days of the invasion.

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The lines of mourners in the days after — that sometimes stretched for more than a mile — were also quiet expressions of defiance in a country where support for Navalny has been outlawed as "extremist."

But while the funeral showed dissent still exists in Russia, it also underlined how much control the Kremlin now has. Navalny's death in an Arctic prison colony last month has blown an enormous hole in Russia's democracy movement and opposition to Putin appears to have never been more dangerous.

This weekend, Russia will hold elections that will hand Putin a fifth term as president, extending his already 24-year rule by another six years.

Putin faces no real challengers, with anti-war candidates blocked from the ballot and virtually all leading opposition figures either in jail, exile or dead. Most independent media are shut down or driven abroad and criticism of the authorities is now effectively criminalized.

Confronted with that bleak landscape, Russia's democratic opposition and Navalny's team are trying to find a way forward, saying they are determined to continue their struggle but acknowledging it has never been so difficult.

"We have no choice but to continue," Leonid Volkov, Navalny's longtime chief of staff, told ABC News in an interview this month.

Navalny "was, like, a never-give-up person. And, if we would stop now, it would be like a betrayal of his legacy. But he is not replaceable," Volkov said.

Volkov, like most of Navalny's team, lives in exile, in his case in Lithuania, and would face arrest if he returned to Russia. He, like the rest of Navalny's former colleagues, is now supporting Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to step in to lead the movement her husband built.

Navalny's team is accusing the Kremlin of murdering him in prison, and Volkov said he and the movement's other leaders understood the risks to themselves now were also very high.

"We are well aware of these personal risks, but it's our choice to keep going," he said.

A week after ABC News spoke to Volkov, he was attacked outside his home in Vilnius by an assailant with a hammer. In a video posted afterward, Volkov said the attacker struck him 15 times, injuring his leg and breaking his arm.

Volkov blamed the assault on Putin. "This is obviously a typical, characteristically gangster-ish hello from Putin," Volkov said in the video posted after the attack.

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Lithuania's authorities also blamed Putin's regime, with its counter-intelligence service saying the attack on Volkov was likely an attempt to damage the opposition ahead of the presidential election.

Volkov, though, has said he is undeterred.

Navalny's team has called for a guerrilla protest on election day, telling people to gather quietly at midday on Sunday outside polling stations and encouraging them to vote for any candidate except Putin or to spoil their ballots. They have told people not to chant slogans or openly protest, saying such actions are too dangerous.

Yulia Navalnaya on Thursday also called for Western countries not to recognize the results of the election as legitimate.

Buttressed by his near-total control of the media, Putin does still have substantial support in Russia, and many accept his framing of the war, although apathy toward politics is also widespread. Polling in February by the Levada Center, one of Russia's only independent pollsters, showed an approval rating for Putin of over 80%, although fear of retaliation makes polling in Russia unreliable.

In the run-up to the election, there were still glimpses of anti-war sentiment that exists below the surface.

Boris Nadezhdin was a little-known, veteran liberal politician until December when he announced he would run against Putin on a moderate platform calling for an end to the war. Nadezhdin quickly became an unlikely lightning rod for dissent. Long lines of people began appearing outside his campaign headquarters to give their signatures to back his candidacy.

Nadezhdin said he had gathered around 200,000 signatures. But, in the end, he was kept off the ballot by authorities, who declared his signatures invalid, a tactic frequently used to block Kremlin critics from running, according to experts.

Nadezhdin, in an interview with ABC News in February, said he was blocked from running because the Kremlin had seen his candidacy was rising in the polls.

"It's the only reason. If my rating was 1% or 2%, no problem to register me," he told ABC News.

"I am sure that the majority of people in Russia want the Special Military Operation be stopped as soon as possible," he said, using the Kremlin's term for the war.

Asked why he was able to criticize the war and campaign when others face arrest and persecution, Nadezhdin said it was primarily because, unlike Navalny, he never criticized Putin personally. He said it is also because he has personally known some Kremlin senior officials for more than two decades.

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In the 1990s, Nadezhdin worked with Sergey Kiriyenko, who now oversees domestic politics for the Kremlin. Nadezhdin served as an aide to Kiriyenko when he was briefly prime minister before Kiriyenko turned away from liberal politics.

"I am familiar with the leaders of Kremlin administration, and I am the same generation, they know me personally. It works in Russia," said Nadezhdin. He insists, however, he never sought the Kremlin's blessing before running.

Despite his hopes that his relationship with the Kremlin might shield his campaign, this week Nadezhdin's local campaign manager was beaten up by unknown attackers in Vladivostok.

Nadezhdin has not called on his supporters to take part in the election day demonstrations called by Navalny, only calling for people to vote against Putin.

Volkov said the election day actions won't stop the Kremlin producing a rigged result, but will undercut its claims there is near universal support for Putin.

"We don't expect that those votes be counted. They will not," he said. "But people will come together. They'll see each other. And they'll have this feeling that they actually exist. They're actually not the marginal minority as the propaganda pretends they are."

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