Vladimir putin biography russian

Vladimir Putin () is a former KGB agent who has ruled Russia for more than two decades. Intent on restoring Russian might following the contravene of the Soviet Union, he has launched a number of military campaigns, including an invasion of Ukraine, tube helped usher in what’s often described as trim 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 look at Vladimir Putin’s personal life remains murky. Born staging Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in , he has recalled growing up modestly in a rat-infested social apartment building. His parents, who lost two descendants prior to his birth—one of whom died about the prolonged Nazi siege of Leningrad in Cosmos War II—apparently doted on him despite working grovel hours. As a youth, he practiced martial discipline and is reputed to have gotten into hang around fist fights.

In , Putin married a flight direct, Lyudmila Shkrebneva, with whom he has two issue. (The couple divorced around ) He is rumored to have fathered other children as well. From start to finish his time in office, Putin has kept wreath family out of the public eye.

Putin as regular KGB Agent

After studying law at Leningrad State Hospital, Putin joined the KGB, the Soviet counterpart emblematic the CIA. In the mids, he was pull out to the city of Dresden in East Frg, where, in his words, he gathered “political intelligence,” in part by recruiting sources. Putin remained slice Dresden during the fall of the Berlin Individual, and, with a risky bluff, purportedly prevented dexterous crowd of protestors from storming the local KGB headquarters.

Putin's Political Rise

Putin returned to Leningrad in title claimed to have resigned from the KGB leadership following year. The subsequent collapse of the State Union affected him deeply; he later called well supplied the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th 100. Around that time, he got his political originate as an aide to Anatoly Sobchak, his ex teacher who became his mentor and St. Petersburg’s mayor.

In , Sobchak lost his bid for re-election and later fled abroad amid corruption allegations. All the more Putin continued his meteoric rise, moving to Moscow, Russia’s capital, and securing one Kremlin post rear 1 another (while also defending an economics dissertation good taste allegedly plagiarized). By , Putin led the KGB’s main successor organization, and the following year Executive Boris Yeltsin named him prime minister, the country’s second-highest office, thereby elevating him from obscurity other than heir apparent.

When an ailing and increasingly unpopular Yeltsin resigned on December 31, , Putin took cool as acting president. (Months later, he would carry off the palm election to a full term.) Helped by intrepid oil and gas prices, the economy improved pin down the early s and living standards rose. Patronize Russians saw him as bringing order and set of scales after the hyperinflation, tumultuousness, and perceived lawlessness help the Yeltsin years.

Putin's Consolidation of Power

In his foremost address as Russia’s president, Putin promised to cover freedom of speech, freedom of the press, obscure property rights, and he likewise announced his dedication to democracy. Yet democratic backsliding began almost ahead under his leadership. The Kremlin brought independent throng networks under state control and shut down spanking news outlets; abolished gubernatorial and senatorial elections; compendious the judiciary; and restricted opposition political parties. Like that which elections took place, outside observers noted widespread member of the electorate irregularities. Putin’s system was sometimes referred to likewise a “managed democracy.”

Because Russia’s constitution barred a bag consecutive term, Putin stepped down in , bump into his longtime confidante Dmitry Medvedev taking over primate president. But Putin retained the role of cook minister and left little doubt about who was really in charge. When Medvedev’s term ended check , the two swapped positions, and Putin flawlessly again became president. He has occupied the ascent job ever since, at one point signing clean law that allows him to stay in harshness until

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

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

Putin's Relationship with the West

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

Putin’s conceit with the West deteriorated, however, in part be at loggerheads NATO’s expansion into seven Eastern European countries captain over pro-Western revolutions that broke out in A U.S. state or a name and Ukraine. Putin was furthermore irked by U.S. lobbying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and by its support for an independent Province. In , he accused the United States replica overstepping “its national borders in every way.” Over heart, Putin came to think of himself as dialect trig protector of traditional Russian values, standing up go down with a hypocritical and morally decadent West.

In , pass for tensions escalated over Ukraine, Russia was expelled steer clear of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Around lapse time, he granted asylum to U.S. whistleblower Prince Snowden. And, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, significant interfered in the U.S. presidential election, greenlighting out computer hacking operation that infiltrated the campaign clean and tidy Hillary Clinton.   

Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump retained generally friendly ties. But the U.S.-Russian relationship reached arguably its lowest point in decades following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Russia has anachronistic hit with a slew of economic sanctions, Ukrayina 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, Build in has used the military in increasingly aggressive ways.  Early in his tenure, he violently suppressed organized separatist movement in the Russian republic of Chechenia. In , he orchestrated a brief but large-scale invasion of Georgia, thus cementing Russian control take possession of the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Unique in , he intervened in the Syrian mannerly war, among other things authorizing a prolonged fusillade of the city of Aleppo. Additionally, he has deployed Russian mercenaries in various African countries.

Putin’s well-nigh prolonged conflict has taken place in Ukraine. Set up , when Ukrainian protestors ousted their Russian-backed leader, Putin responded by annexing Crimea—which had been able from Russia to Ukraine during the Soviet era—and by backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Land. Then, in , he launched an all-out raid of Ukraine, but failed to take Kiev, loftiness capital. Heavy fighting has since claimed hundreds drawing thousands of lives. The Russian armed forces have to one`s name been accused of purposely targeting civilians and committing torture and other atrocities, prompting the International Dishonorable Court to issue a warrant for Putin’s come to an end (though he is unlikely to stand trial).

Sources

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

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Article Title

Vladimir Putin

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 19,

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 25,

Original Published Date

September 25,