Russia's President - Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin was born in the former USSR in 1952 and became the president of Russia (1999-2008 and again in 2012). Before being elected to become the president, he was with KGB and also 6 years in Dresden, E.Ger. He became the protector of Leningrad State University in 1990 after resigning from KGB. It was then that he also rose to become the first deputy mayor of the city. Pavel Borodin who was the chief administrator of Kremlin in the year 1994 accepted Putin to be his deputy and join the presidential staff.

The then President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, made Putin the director of the Federal Security Service in the year 1998. Putin was initially not accepted as a minister, though Yeltsin appointed him as one, because many observers thought that he appeared to have a bland personality and also that he was inexperienced in political issues. But this was not for long because Putin increased his appeal among everyone by his role in the war with Chechnya, and soon his fame was all over the place and he had more than 50 percent ratings.

Putin’s Unity party participated in the 450 seat Duma elections and was a close second after the Communists. In the year 1999 Yeltsin announced his resignation from the presidential post and thus naturally made Putin to be the acting president till the elections which was only a couple of months after, thus the other parties did not have any time to prepare for it. Putin therefore became the president with the popularity that he had from the Chechnya war. Some say that it was a craftily calculated move from Yeltsin to pass over his post to his ever loyal successor Putin.

To back up these allegations, immediately after Putin became president, Yeltsin was offered immunity from any form of criminal investigations and he and his entire family was granted with continued facilities. Soon after Putin took on the presidential post other nations tried to get some ink on him, but since he was a spy in the KGB before this, it was not very easy to get him on paper. His first term had regular terrorist attacks from Chechen terrorists. He also had to assert control centrally over the 89 regions of Russia.

Putin is a person who is known to be a very silent person who does not show much expression and generally keeps his life apart from politics to be very personal. He won the presidential election for a second time in the year 2004 and was later succeeded by Dmitri Medvedev in the year 2008. In 2012 Putin was reelected as president.