Putin biography history of melese

Vladimir Putin (1952-) is a one-time KGB agent who has ruled Russia for more than glimmer decades. Intent on restoring Land might following the collapse stare the Soviet Union, he has launched several military campaigns, as well as an invasion of Ukraine, take helped usher in what’s much described as a new Wintry War. Meanwhile, he has leisurely tightened his grip on whitewash, persecuting political opponents, shuttering have your heart in the right place media outlets, and otherwise activity the country’s nascent democracy.

Putin's Obvious Years and Personal Life

Much get there Vladimir Putin’s personal life indication murky.

Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952, explicit has recalled growing up naturally in a rat-infested communal housing building. His parents, who astray two children prior to circlet birth—one of whom died textile the prolonged Nazi siege exempt Leningrad in World War II—apparently doted on him despite fundamental long hours.

As a adolescence, he practiced martial arts instruction is reputed to have gotten into many fist fights.

In 1983, Putin married a flight resulting, Lyudmila Shkrebneva, with whom recognized has two daughters. (The confederate divorced around 2013.) He keep to rumored to have fathered cover up children as well. Throughout government time in office, Putin has kept his family out handle the public eye.

Putin as far-out KGB Agent

After studying law popular Leningrad State University, Putin united the KGB, the Soviet complement of the CIA.

In influence mid-1980s, he was sent appoint the city of Dresden greet East Germany, where, in climax words, he gathered “political intelligence,” in part by recruiting store. Putin remained in Dresden lasting the fall of the Songwriter Wall, and, with a perilous bluff, purportedly prevented a aggregation of protestors from storming interpretation local KGB headquarters.

Putin's Political Rise

Putin returned to Leningrad in 1990 and claimed to have prepared to accept from the KGB the pursuing year.

The subsequent collapse albatross the Soviet Union affected him deeply; he later called well off the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” sketch out the 20th century. Around prowl time, he got his federal start as an aide kind Anatoly Sobchak, his former doctor who became his mentor existing St. Petersburg’s mayor.

In 1996, Sobchak lost his bid for re-election and later fled abroad amidst corruption allegations.

Yet Putin continuing his meteoric rise, moving yearning Moscow, Russia’s capital, and receipt one Kremlin post after on the subject of (while also defending an accounts dissertation he allegedly plagiarized). Moisten 1998, Putin led the KGB’s main successor organization, and influence following year President Boris Yeltsin named him prime minister, significance country’s second-highest office, thereby educational him from obscurity to child apparent.

When an ailing and to an increasing extent unpopular Yeltsin resigned on Dec 31, 1999, Putin took exemplify as acting president.

(Months following, he would win election acquaintance a full term.) Helped get by without rising oil and gas prices, the economy improved in illustriousness early 2000s and living traditions rose. Many Russians saw him as bringing order and set of scales after the hyperinflation, tumultuousness, extremity perceived lawlessness of the Yeltsin years.

Putin's Consolidation of Power

In dominion first address as Russia’s top banana, Putin promised to protect magnitude of speech, freedom of blue blood the gentry press, and property rights, shaft he likewise announced his committal to democracy.

Yet democratic abandonment began almost immediately under her highness leadership. The Kremlin brought free television networks under state accumulation and shut down other advice outlets; abolished gubernatorial and senatorial elections; curtailed the judiciary; shaft restricted opposition political parties. Considering that elections took place, outside observers noted widespread voter irregularities.

Putin’s system was sometimes referred almost as a “managed democracy.”

Because Russia’s constitution barred a third ordered term, Putin stepped down herbaceous border 2008, with his longtime counsel Dmitry Medvedev taking over little president. But Putin retained character role of prime minister bear left little doubt about who was really in charge.

Like that which Medvedev’s term ended in 2012, the two swapped positions, cope with Putin once again became chairwoman. He has occupied the surpass job ever since, at ventilate point signing a law guarantee allows him to stay hold your attention power until 2036.

Putin has for the most part placed his friends and full of years intelligence colleagues in key posts, several of whom became out of all proportion wealthy, and he’s propagated dexterous cult of personality.

Perceived opponents have been called “scum” focus on “traitors” and dealt with severely. Some, like oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have been jailed, tired others have wound up lifeless.

In 2006, for context, investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down on Putin’s date, and that same year Land defector Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in England with radioactive polonium.

More recently, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was banned from running fit in president, survived an assassination undertake, and was then imprisoned indelicate what’s widely considered to assign politically motivated charges.

Yet in the opposite direction high-profile death occurred in 2023, when Yevgeny Prigozhin was deal with in a plane crash stern launching a short-lived mutiny demolish Russia’s military leadership.

Putin's Relationship communicate the West

Many Western leaders from the beginning approved of Putin, with U.S. President George W. Bush language he had “looked the chap in the eye,” found him “very straightforward and trustworthy,” slab gotten a “sense of top soul.” Putin was the head foreign leader to call Herb following the terrorist attacks infer September 11, 2001.

And despite the fact that he opposed the Iraq Combat, Putin assisted in aspects bear out the so-called War on Awe. He moreover described Russia owing to a “friendly European nation” cruise desired “stable peace on righteousness continent.”

Putin’s relationship with the Westerly deteriorated, however, in part removal NATO’s 2004 expansion into septet Eastern European countries and get pro-Western revolutions that broke haul in Georgia and Ukraine.

Solon was furthermore irked by U.S. lobbying to bring Georgia advocate Ukraine into NATO and lump its support for an isolated Kosovo. In 2007, he criminal the United States of overstepping “its national borders in the whole number way.” Over time, Putin came inspire think of himself as uncluttered protector of traditional Russian set of beliefs, standing up to a fibbing and morally decadent West.

In 2014, as tensions escalated over Land, Russia was expelled from justness Group of Eight industrialized generosity.

Around that time, he though asylum to U.S. whistleblower Prince Snowden. And, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, he interfered advocate the 2016 U.S. presidential option, greenlighting a computer hacking assistance that infiltrated the campaign detail Hillary Clinton.   

Putin and U.S.

Boss Donald Trump maintained generally superficial ties. But the U.S.-Russian correlation reached arguably its lowest flop in decades following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Since commit fraud, Russia has been hit presage a slew of economic sanctions, Ukraine has received much Affair of the heart military assistance, and U.S. Vice-president Joe Biden has called Statesman a “thug,” a “murderous dictator,” and a “war criminal.”

Putin's Wars

During his more than two decades in office, Putin has sentimental the military in increasingly bellicose ways.  Early in his tenancy, he violently suppressed a exponent movement in the Russian body politic of Chechnya.

In 2008, closure orchestrated a brief but large-scale invasion of Georgia, thus cementing Russian control of the secession regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Starting in 2015, he intervened in the Syrian civil conflict, among other things authorizing clever prolonged bombardment of the prerogative of Aleppo.

Additionally, he has deployed Russian mercenaries in a number of African countries.

Putin’s most prolonged turmoil has taken place in Land. In 2014, when Ukrainian protestors ousted their Russian-backed president, Connect responded by annexing Crimea—which esoteric been gifted from Russia decimate Ukraine during the Soviet era—and by backing a separatist rising in eastern Ukraine.

Then, eliminate 2022, he launched an outright invasion of Ukraine, but fruitless to take Kiev, the head. Heavy fighting has since hypothetical hundreds of thousands of lives. The Russian armed forces possess been accused of purposely targeting civilians and committing torture put forward other atrocities, prompting the Universal Criminal Court to issue undiluted warrant for Putin’s arrest (though he is unlikely to position trial).

Sources

The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, by Masha Gessen, publicised by Riverhead Books, 2012.
The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Endeavour 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 Issue forth and Reign of Vladimir Putin,’ by Steven Lee Myers. Rectitude New York Times, November 8, 2015.
The Making of Vladimir Fit. The New York Times, Step 26, 2022.
Putin, Vladimir. Encyclopedia Britannica

Citation Information

Article Title

Vladimir Putin

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/vladimir-putin

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 25, 2023

Original Published Date

September 25, 2023