The Great President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of the Russian Federation

President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of the Russian Federation

His Excellency Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin born 7 October 1952) served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when president Boris Yeltsin resigned in a surprising move. Putin won the 2000 presidential election and in 2004 he was re-elected for a second term lasting until 7 May 2008.

Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR (now Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation), to parents Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna Shelomova (1911–1998). His autobiography, Ot Pervogo Litsa (English: In the First Person), which is based on Putin’s interviews, speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a communal apartment in Leningrad. In sixth grade he started taking sport seriously in the form of sambo and then judo. In his youth, Putin was eager to emulate the intelligence officer characters. Putin graduated from the International Law branch of the Law Department of the Leningrad State University in 1975, writing his final thesis on international law. While at university he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and remained a member until the party was dissolved in December 1991 Putin joined the KGB in 1975 upon graduation from university, and underwent a year’s training at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad.

He then went on to work briefly in the Second Department (counter-intelligence) before he was transferred to the First Department, where among his duties was the monitoring of foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad, while using the cover of being a police officer with the CID. From 1985 to 1990 the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany.  On 28 July 1983 Putin married Kaliningrad-born Lyudmila Shkrebneva, at that time an undergraduate student of the Spanish branch of the Philology Department of the Leningrad State University and a former Aeroflot flight attendant. They have two daughters, Mariya Putina (born 28 April 1985 in St. Petersburg) and Yekaterina Putina (born 31 August 1986 in Dresden). Putin’s father was “a model communist, genuinely believing in its ideals while trying to put them into practice in his own life”. Putin’s mother “was a devoted Orthodox believer”. Though she kept no icons at home, she attended church regularly, despite the government’s persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church at that time. She ensured that Putin was secretly christened as a baby and she regularly took him to services.

Following the collapse of the East German regime, Putin was recalled to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1991 he assumed a position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector. In May 1990, Putin was appointed Mayor Sobchak’s advisor on international affairs. On 28 June 1991, he was appointed head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor’s Office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments. From 1994 to 1997, Putin was appointed to additional positions in the Saint Petersburg political arena. In March 1994 he became first deputy head of the administration of the city of Saint Petersburg. On 26 March 1997 President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin deputy chief of Presidential Staff, which he remained until May 1998. On 25 July 1998 Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999. In April 1999, FSB On 9 August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed one of three First Deputy Prime Ministers, which enabled him later on that day, as the previous government led by Sergei Stepashin had been sacked, to be appointed acting

 

Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin also announced that he wanted to see Putin as his successor. Later, that same day, Putin agreed to run for the presidency. On 16 August, the State Duma approved his appointment as Prime Minister with 233 votes in favour Putin’s law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the renewed crisis in Chechnya soon combined to raise his popularity and allowed him to overtake all rivals.

Putin’s rise to public office in August 1999 coincided with an aggressive resurgence of the near-dormant conflict in the North Caucasus, when a number of Chechens invaded a neighboring region starting the War in Dagestan. Both in Russia and abroad, Putin’s public image was forged by his tough handling of the war.

His rise to Russia’s highest office ended up being even more rapid: on 31 December 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the constitution, Putin became Acting President of the Russian Federation.

The first Decree that Putin signed 31 December 1999, was the one “On guarantees for former president of the Russian Federation and members of his family”. This ensured that “corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives” would not be pursued, although this claim is not strictly verifiable In December 2000, Putin sanctioned the law to change the National Anthem of Russia. At the time the Anthem had music by Glinka and no words. The change was to restore (with a minor modification) the music of the post-1944 Soviet anthem by Alexandrov, while the new text was composed by Mikhalkov. On 14 March 2004, Putin was re-elected to the presidency for a second term, receiving 71% of the vote.

 

 

Putin’s election seemed to many insiders, and outsiders, to mark a new beginning in Russian’s post-Soviet history. Fortunately, Putin was also backed by a team of economic reformers from his native St. Petersburg.  In fact, the tension that was created between these two groups was a central feature of Putin’s first term in office.

One of Putin’s more important contributions included the measures he took to restore the Kremlin as the decision making authority in Russia. A pro-Putin Russian political party, United Russia, won an overwhelming victory in the 2003 parliamentary elections.  Outsiders labeled the election “free,” but Russian national TV had unfairly campaigned for the governing party.  In March 2004, Putin won reelection as President for a second term, garnering 71% of the popular vote.

 

In September 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis, Putin launched a new measure to replace the election of regional governors with a system whereby governors would be proposed by the President and approved by regional legislatures. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing the rule of law During his eight years in office, due to strong macroeconomic management, important fiscal policy reforms, and a confluence of high oil prices, surging capital inflows, and access to low-cost external financing,^[3] Russia’s economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase by 72%

Since February 2006, the political philosophy of Putin’s administration has often been described as a “Sovereign democracy“, the term being used both with positive and pejorative connotations. In June 2007, Putin organised a conference for history teachers to promote a high-school teachers manual called A Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006: A Manual for History Teachers. Under the Putin administration the economy made real gains of an average 7% per year. Some oil revenue went to stabilization fund established in 2004. The fund accumulated oil revenue, which allowed Russia to repay all of the Soviet Union’s debts by 2005. In 2004, President Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gases Putin called for a “fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all”. He proposed certain initiatives such as establishing international centres for the enrichment of uranium and prevention of deploying weapons in outer space.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, he agreed to the establishment of coalition military bases in Central Asia before and during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. During the Iraq crisis of 2003, Putin opposed Washington’s move to invade Iraq without the benefit of a United Nations Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force In his annual address to the Federal Assembly on 26 April 2007, Putin announced plans to declare a moratorium on the observance of the CFE Treaty by Russia until all NATO members ratified it and started observing its provisions, as Russia had been doing on a unilateral basis On 16 October 2007 Putin visited Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit in Tehran, where he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Other participants were leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan This is the first visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to Iran since Joseph Stalin‘s participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943 Vladimir Putin strongly opposes the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

He called any support for this act “immoral” and “illegal”.^] He described Kosovo’s declaration of independence a “terrible precedent” that will come back to hit the West “in the face” On 8 May 2008, Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia .On 9 June 2009, after 16 years of slowly progressing accession talks with the World Trade Organization, which, according to the European Union, might be completed by the end of the year, In 2007, Putin was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. In September 2006, France’s president Jacques Chirac awarded Vladimir Putin the insignia of Grand-Croix (Grand Cross) of the Légion d’honneur, the highest French decoration, to celebrate his contribution to the friendship between the two countries The 2007 election campaign of the United Russia party went under the slogan “Putin’s Plan: Russia’s Victory”.

When asked on the “Putin’s plan”, Vladimir Putin said the last five Addresses contained some key parts “devoted to the state’s medium-term development”, and “if all these key ideas were put together to build a coherent system, it can become the country’s development plan in the medium-term