best biography of vladimir putin

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Top 10 books on Vladimir Putin's Russia

I used fiction to depict the catastrophe that the president has inflicted on Russia, but these terrifying stories about him include much nonfiction

T he Russia of President Vladimir Putin is both wearyingly familiar and appallingly unique. A corrupt pseudo-democracy run for personal enrichment by its leader and his cronies? Hardly enough to raise an eyebrow in our sadly flawed world. But one that also happens to be a nuclear-armed leviathan, which gave personal and economic freedom a whirl, but has been yanked back into authoritarianism – not so common.

In my novel, The Senility of Vladimir P, I have tried to convey some sense of the catastrophe that Putin has inflicted on Russia . Set in an isolated dacha outside Moscow, where the now senile ex-president wiles away his days in imaginary conversations, while the staff busily milks him for every last kopeck, it is a tragicomedy from which not even one honest man can emerge uncorrupted.

There are numerous factual books exploring the impact of Putin’s rise and rule over Russia. In the list below I have included a sample of those that I have found most revealing – but others could just as well have made the cut. I have included a couple of contemporary novels to pass the lens of fiction over the society that has evolved under the Russian leader.

Inevitably, the selection is idiosyncratic. Another confession: my linguistic limitations mean that the list is restricted to books that have appeared in English.

1. First Person by Vladimir Putin Start with the man himself. This is an account of six interviews given by Putin to a trio of handpicked Russian journalists. The outstanding impression that emerges is of blankness – a moral vacuum at the core of Putin’s being. You understand that this isn’t incidental, but utterly integral to his personality, only when you realise that this book was commissioned and released to help Putin become known when he was first running for president. In other words, he wanted to present himself like this. The emptiness at his core is so profound that it can’t even see itself.

2. One Soldier’s War in Chechnya by Arkady Babchenko If a measure of a society is the way it treats its children, then it is also, at least in part, the way it treats its soldiers. Written by an ex-soldier who fought in both the first Chechen war and Putin’s second Chechen campaign, it sketches a world of unrelieved brutality within the ranks of the Russian army, a vicious microcosm in which the officers, or “jackals”, relentlessly assault the expendable soldiers, or “vouchers” under their command. Here is a spotlight into one corner of the alienated, demoralised society on which Putin set to work.

3. Babylon by Victor Pelevin Tatarsky, the hero of Pelevin’s novel, is a failed poet who finds himself earning unimaginable sums as a copywriter plagiarising western advertisements for Russian clients in post-Soviet Moscow – and sinking into a world of drugs, guns, gangsters, and more drugs. Reality becomes thinner and finally seems to tear away altogether. Although the hallucinogenic quality of some of the writing won’t be to everyone’s taste, Babylon captures the disorientation of a society cut free from its moorings in which old certainties have been replaced by naked opportunism and aggression.

4. The Man without a Face by Masha Gessen One of many books tracing the rise and crimes of Putin, Gessen’s appeals for the interweaving of her personal story with Putin’s progressive domination of Russian society. In one unforgettable scene, Gessen, a journalist, is called in for a meeting by Putin, who is unaware that her excoriating critique of him has already been published abroad. Her account of the brief flowering of hope after the disputed parliamentary elections of December 2011 – followed by the inevitable crackdown – is particularly poignant.

5. Mafia State by Luke Harding Another journalist writing about Putin’s Russia from a distinctively personal standpoint, Harding was a British correspondent [ for the Guardian ] posted to Moscow during Putin’s second term in office. He soon became the subject of a campaign of harassment and intimidation by the FSB – the successor organisation to the KGB – culminating in his deportation from the country. Harding’s experiences at the hands of the Russian security services give a glimpse of the world in which the opponents of the Putin regime struggle to survive.

6. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev Pomerantsev relocated from London to Moscow to work in television and ended up writing an account of the characters he met during his years in the Russian capital. We meet the provincial girls, or “cattle”, looking for their sugar daddy (or “Forbes”); the entrepreneur who found her business confiscated and herself in jail because she happened to be on the wrong side of an intra-Kremlin dispute; a gangster turned novelist; the super-rich on planes out of Putin’s Russia to London – and many others in between. A patchwork tapestry that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief.

7. Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin Sorokin’s dystopian satire is set in the Russia of 2028, which is now ruled by a tsar. Andrei Komiaga, the hero of the novel, is an Oprichnik, one of the tsar’s security operatives whose main role is state-sponsored terrorism against uncooperative elements of society. This blood-spattered novel of brutality and decadence pushes political satire to its limits but is a sharp reflection on the corruption and authoritarianism of Putin’s Russia.

8. Fragile Empire by Ben Judah Journalist Ben Judah’s book is the fruit of extensive travels and interviews within Russia. Judah seeks to set the country that he finds on his journeys against the stated intentions of Putin at the time of his rise to power and the propaganda of the Putin regime in the years that have followed. The picture that emerges is of a society pervaded by corruption and instability, and divided between the urban elites of Moscow and St Petersburg and grim reality in the provinces.

9. Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha Published in the US but not in Britain – for fear of the UK’s tyrant-friendly libel laws – American academic Karen Dawisha’s book provides a dispassionate, extensively researched account of Putin’s early criminality and the descent of the Russian government into an engine of organised crime. A must-read for anyone asking if the Putin regime is really as corrupt as people say and who wants to see the balance of evidence for themselves.

10. The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith Finally, a book that is not about Russia at all, but a classic work of political science that lays bare the reality of how political leaders acquire and retain power. The book goes a long way to explaining how a man like Putin came to power at a unique moment in Russian history – and why the only way he’ll be got rid of in the foreseeable future is if the Russian security establishment loses faith in his ability to feed their insatiable greed for graft.

• The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig is published by Atlantic Books, priced £12.99. It is available from the Guardian bookshop for £10.39, including free UK p&p .
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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

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 .

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, who is vladimir putin.

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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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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The 14 best books to help you understand Vladimir Putin’s Russia

This list offers the most incisive books on the past and present of Russia and its president.

By New Statesman

Putin’s Russia: The Definitive Account of Putin’s Rise to Power by Anna Politkovskaya

Harvill Press, 320pp, £10.99

The journalist Politkovskya told us exactly who Vladimir Putin was back in 2004, two years before she was assassinated in Moscow. It is both sobering and instructive to read her account of the horrors of the Second Chechen War between 1999 and 2009, carried out on Putin’s orders, given the subsequent invasion of Ukraine. A prophetic account of what was to come.

The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev

Polity, 140pp, £17.99

A professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Medvedev produces a brilliant collection of essays on the ideas, politics and history that are shaping contemporary Russian society under Putin, and how the Kremlin appeals to nostalgia and nationalism to stoke regime support.

Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia by Samuel A Greene and Graeme B Robertson

Yale, 296pp, £20.00

Drawing on extensive on-the-ground research, including focus groups and opinion surveys, Greene and Robertson examine the roots of Putin’s popularity and his support across different sections of Russian society. The current situation has revealed the importance of understanding who supports Putin and why.

Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China and Russia , edited by Karrie Koesel, Valerie Bunce, Jessica Chen Weiss

Oxford University Press, 344pp, £23.49

Among this collection of articles, Aleksandar Matovski’s chapter on the logic of Putin’s popular appeal and his efforts to position himself as defending Russia against its external enemies and “making Russia great again”, is particularly pertinent. Other scholars examine the role of patriotic education and propaganda in authoritarian systems. This would be a good book to pair with Timur Kuran’s Private Truths, Public Lies (1995) on why and how public opinion still matters under authoritarian rule.

The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War by Arkady Ostrovsky

Atlantic Books, 400pp, £9.99

This terrific, short history relays the experience of economic chaos and humiliating decline that accompanied the Soviet Union’s collapse for its citizens. It also describes how Putin and his inner circle took power and seized control of the media to shape the president’s popular image during his first decade in power.

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev

Faber & Faber, 304pp, £9.99

This remains one of the best (and most beautifully written) books on Putin and modern Russia in recent years. Pomerantsev’s work captures both the dizzying pace of change in Russia during the economic boom of Putin’s first two terms, and the endemic corruption and compromise that came with it. Though only seven years old, Pomerantsev’s Russia of excitement and possibility already feels like a different world from the repression and censorship that has since risen to the fore. It ably gives a sense of what has and is being lost.

Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition and Compromise in Putin’s Russia by Joshua Yaffa

Granta Books, 368pp, £12.99

A fascinating character study of life in contemporary Russia under Putin, this work uncovers the trade-offs and compromises that individuals make under authoritarian rule. It is worth reading alone for the story of the zookeeper from Crimea during Russia’s annexation of the peninsula by Russia in 2014.

Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West by Catherine Belton

William Collins, 640pp, £8.49

An exhaustive account of Putin’s rise, from Dresden in the 1980s to the Kremlin. Belton explores his links with oligarchs, and the way those relationships have evolved over the years – to the point where Putin now uses oligarchs as messengers in return for allowing them to amass huge fortunes. Anyone who steps out of line pays the price. Belton is devastating on the extent of Kremlin-driven corruption and the salting away of illicit wealth overseas.

The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

Granta Books, 528pp, £10.99

Gessen uses the life stories of four young Russians born in the 1980s to frame how Russia first opened up politically, then closed itself off again, with decreasing space for dissent. A vivid and deeply personal work of analysis.

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder

Bodley Head, 368pp, £10.99

A historian at Yale, Snyder dissects Putin’s thinking and the philosophers that inspired him. The book is especially good on the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and excoriates the West’s complacency and failure to understand the political and geopolitical forces at work.

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy

Allen Lane, 432pp, £9.99

Plokhy analyses the ossification of policy and command structures in Soviet Ukraine that allowed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster to happen. This is a story of how design flaws were compounded by human frailty.

All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Zygar

PublicAffairs, 400pp, £14.99

Anyone interested in Kremlinology or in separating speculation from reality about the inner workings of the Kremlin and of Putin’s own circle should read this book.

The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past by Shaun Walker

Oxford University Press, 288pp, £14.99

Putin’s call for “denazification” and attempted erasure of Ukrainian history makes this an ideal time to revisit Walker’s work on how historical narratives in Russia and Ukraine are used – and abused – in national politics.

Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

Fitzcarraldo Editions, 704pp, £14.99

Alexievich’s brilliant oral history of the collapse of the Soviet Union reminds us that the best way to understand what is happening to a people is to ask them.

Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.

[See also: Books of the year 2022 ]

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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.

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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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9 Books That Can Help You Understand Russia Right Now

A s an influx of news comes out about Russia ‘s potential influence on the U.S., many Americans may be curious to learn more about the country’s recent history. What has motivated Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and what defines its president, Vladimir Putin ?

In times of rapid breaking news and quickly shifting political positions, it can be helpful to take a step back and read something substantive for context. TIME asked experts from the Atlantic Council, the Wilson Center and other institutions to recommend books on Russia that would be accessible and illuminating for the general interest reader. Here are the volumes they suggested, covering everything from Kremlinology to the country’s cyber landscape.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (2014)

By Peter Pomerantsev

Both Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, and Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, recommend this cross-section of Russian society. “The book stands out because it manages to be entertaining and very accessible to a general reader while capturing a key moment of Putin’s Russia: the emergence and consolidation of the tools of state-sponsored propaganda,” says Polyakova.

All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin (2016)

By Mikhail Zygar

McFaul and Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, both recommend this book, with Åslund calling it an “excellent recent presentation of the people around Putin and how Russian policy is made,” though he notes “it downplays Putin’s importance too much.”

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (2015)

By Steven Lee Myers

Åslund, McFaul, and Sestanovich all recommend this account of the president’s ascent from a childhood of poverty, through his work for the KGB, to his powerful role at the center of the Kremlin. Åslund calls it “the best political biography of Putin.”

Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin (2013)

By Ben Judah

John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, recommends this different look at Putin’s regime, calling it “a good overall look at Russia” that is “easy to read and impressionistic.”

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism (2016)

By Charles Clover

Åslund recommends this historical exploration of “Eurasianism,” a theory of Russian nationalism based on geography and ethnicity. Clover traces its roots from the White Russian exiles of the 1920s through today, including interviews with close advisers to Putin.

Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia (2012)

By Thane Gustafson

Åslund calls this volume “outstanding on Russian oil.” The book explores the massive market for Russian oil, as well as the country’s economic and political dependence on the industry.

The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015)

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

Åslund calls this book “excellent on Russian cyber.” Through analysis of everything from hacking to digital surveillance, Soldatov and Borogan explain the potential for the Internet to either solidify or undermine totalitarianism in Russia.

Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire (2016)

By Agnia Grigas

Herbst suggests this book for its “insight into the Kremlin’s effort to regain control in the post-Soviet space.”

Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980)

By Robert K. Massie

“I think in many ways reading some really foundational but still accessible and entertaining works of history and literature will teach Americans much more about Russia that’s relevant to today, than if they simply read the latest trade or scholarly book on Russian foreign policy or Putin,” says Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Case in point: this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of “Russia’s most extraordinary autocrat, a man whose imprint is still felt on people, places and politics from the Far East to the heart of Europe, even three centuries after his death.”

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The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin Paperback – Illustrated, August 23, 2016

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As the world struggles to confront a bolder Russia, the importance of understanding the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin has never been greater. This gripping narrative of Putin's rise to power recounts Putin's origins—from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad to his ascent through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule in the Kremlin. On the one hand, Putin's many domestic reforms—from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights—have helped reshape the potential of millions of Russians whose only experience of democracy had been crime, poverty, and instability after the fall of the Soviet Union. On the other, Putin has ushered in a new authoritarianism—unyielding in its brutal repression of dissent and newly assertive politically and militarily in regions like Crimea and the Middle East.  The New Tsar is a staggering achievement, a deeply researched and essential biography of one of the most important and destabilizing world leaders in recent history, a man whose merciless rule has become inextricably bound to Russia's forseeable future.  

• Print length 592 pages
• Language English
• Publication date August 23, 2016
• Dimensions 6.14 x 1.13 x 9.16 inches
• ISBN-10 0345802799
• ISBN-13 978-0345802798
• See all details

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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (August 23, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345802799
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345802798
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.78 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 1.13 x 9.16 inches
• #380 in Historical Russia Biographies
• #1,975 in Russian History (Books)
• #3,984 in Political Leader Biographies

About the author

Steven lee myers.

Steven Lee Myers has worked at The New York Times since 1989. He has focused most of his career on international affairs, covering the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House during three presidential administrations. He has covered conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq. He was a reporter embedded with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and returned to Baghdad as a correspondent and bureau chief during the winding down of the American war from 2009 to 2011. He first traveled to Russia in 1998 and, beginning in 2002, has spent more than seven years based in Moscow. He has witnessed and written about many of the most significant events that have marked the rise of Vladimir Putin: from the war in Chechnya and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine to the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

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What Is Driving Vladimir Putin?

Understanding Putin is crucial to deciphering his goals in attacking Ukraine. The Russian American journalist Masha Gessen recommends books on the Russian president and the forces that shaped him.

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By Alexandra Alter

In an interview more than two decades ago, Vladimir V. Putin described his younger self, with a hint of self-congratulation, as “a hooligan.” When the interviewer asked if he was exaggerating about his tendency to get into brawls as a schoolboy, Putin took offense.

“You are trying to insult me,” he said. “I was a real thug.”

Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and Moscow native, recounts this exchange in a 2012 biography, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” which was praised as “part psychological profile, part conspiracy study” in The New York Times Book Review. To Gessen, Putin’s unabashed description of himself as “a thug” was key to his self-image: someone who could not be bullied, who would lash out unpredictably if he felt slighted and who relished violence.

Understanding Putin and the forces that shaped him has become an urgent global concern, as leaders around the world try to determine his motivations in launching an unprovoked and disastrous invasion of Ukraine , how to best engage with him and how the conflict might evolve .

So far, the military assault appears to be a catastrophic misstep , one that has resulted in crippling economic sanctions and heavy military losses for Russia, as well as mass civilian casualties and destruction in the very Ukrainian cities Putin claims he wants to “liberate.”

To all this, Putin has said, repeatedly, in public comments that the war is going “according to plan.”

As the conflict escalates, the question of what is driving Putin has become an increasingly perplexing one, with no obvious answers, but with enormous consequences : The war will end, some experts say, when the Russian president allows it to end.

Gessen set out to understand the Russian leader’s mind-set more than a decade ago, first in an article for Vanity Fair, then in “The Man Without a Face.” Tracing Putin’s rise from a petulant and unruly schoolboy to a KGB operative who ascended to the Russian presidency, Gessen examined the post-Soviet political, cultural and economic forces that enabled Putin’s rise, and the way he vilified the West to solidify his grip on power.

After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Gessen wrote a postscript summarizing Putin’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Western democracies, and his evolution from “a bureaucrat who had accidentally been entrusted with a huge country into a megalomaniacal dictator who believed he was on a civilizational mission.”

In a recent phone interview, Gessen, a staff writer for The New Yorker, discussed several books that offer insights into Putin’s psychology, as well as titles that illuminate the cultural and geopolitical context that helped shape Putin’s Russia.

Below are Gessen’s recommendations, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

‘Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.’ By Garry Kasparov. PublicAffairs, 2015.

Kasparov, the russian chess grandmaster, is a longtime critic of putin..

“Kasparov thinks about life as chess. And he looks at this as a series of plays. He doesn’t look at Putin’s psychology so much as he looks at the logic of his actions and says, ‘OK, well, this is how we game it out.’ And it is not uplifting. I mean, the book is not recent, and he was quite sure then that Putin was at war with the west at that point.

It’s funny, because one didn’t really have to press in to see that, one just had to pay attention and not be beholden to the conventional wisdom that says, “but that’s not possible, that’s crazy, he doesn’t really mean it.” We’re going to look at this period between 2012 and 2022 as a period when there’s a lot of that happening, when the war was slowly ramping up in plain view and most of the world was in denial about it.”

‘First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President.’ By Vladimir Putin. PublicAffairs, 2000.

A compilation of interviews with putin published in the united states in 2000..

“I found it incredibly illuminating because, if you read it as a document of what this man wants to tell the world about himself, you learn a lot. It’s not a very long book and it doesn’t have a lot of variety, but he recounts three different fights that he had. One was when he was a kid and he felt mistreated by a teacher, if I remember correctly. One was when he was a student and one was when he was a young officer. And in all three cases, he lashes out. He basically loses his temper and then he goes quiet for a bit, and then he strikes again.

This is what it communicates: that this is somebody who has no desire to control his temper. He thinks of himself as somebody who will lash out, somebody who’s vengeful. Somebody who likes to strike out of the blue, but also — and this is the thing that I’m most worried about now — he will go quiet for a bit and then he will strike again. That’s actually an M.O. that is important to his self-conception.”

‘Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources.’ By Alexander Etkind. Polity, 2021.

This book examines how civilization and politics have been shaped by resources like coal, oil and grain..

“I recommend anything by Alexander Etkind, who is a cultural historian of Russia. His latest book is called “Nature’s Evil” and it’s a cultural history of natural resources. It’s not entirely limited to Russia, but I think it actually goes a very long way to explaining how Russia works.”

‘The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes.’ By Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics. CEU Press, 2020.

Magyar, a social scientist and former politician, looks at the ways in which post-communist regimes have given rise to autocrats who have cracked down on media and political dissent..

“Anything by Balint Magyar. He is a Hungarian social scientist and he has this tome, it’s this huge book called ‘The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes.’ It’s a little on the technical side, but it’s so incredibly illuminating. I think my favorite book of his is called “The Post-Communist Mafia State,” which pretends to be about Hungary, but is the best book for understanding post-Communist Russia and how the regime works.”

Alexandra Alter writes about publishing and the literary world. Before joining The Times in 2014, she covered books and culture for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she reported on religion, and the occasional hurricane, for The Miami Herald. More about Alexandra Alter

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

Ahead of the U.S. elections, Russia is intensifying efforts to elevate candidates  who oppose aid for Ukraine and support isolationism, disinformation experts say.

President Vladimir Putin said that claims Russia planned to invade other countries were “nonsense,” but warned them against hosting  warplanes meant for Ukraine.

A large-scale Russian missile and drone attack damaged power plants  and caused blackouts for more than a million Ukrainians in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the war’s largest assaults on energy infrastructure.

Symbolism or Strategy?: Ukrainians say that defending places with little strategic value is worth the cost in casualties and weapons , because the attacking Russians pay an even higher price. American officials aren’t so sure.

Elaborate Tales: As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online  to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.

Targeting Russia’s Oil Industry: With its army short of ammunition and troops to break the deadlock on the battlefield, Kyiv has increasingly taken the fight beyond the Ukrainian border, attacking oil infrastructure deep in Russian territory .

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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The Best Biography

Vladimir Putin (President of Russia) Biography

February 9, 2024 by Tanisha Leave a Comment

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and intelligence officer who was born in Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R. (now St. Petersburg, Russia) on October 7, 1952. He has held the positions of prime minister (1999 and 2008–12) and president (1999–2008 and 2012–).

Table of Contents

Vladimir Putin Biography

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.

Vladimir putin net worth

While Vladimir Putin acknowledges ownership of an 800-square-foot apartment, a trailer, and three cars, persistent rumours suggest a more extravagant reality.

Even though Vladimir Putin officially claims an annual salary of $140,000, the Russian President’s reported net worth and lifestyle tell a different tale.

While Putin acknowledges ownership of an 800-square-foot apartment, a trailer, and three cars, persistent rumours suggest a more extravagant reality. Reports suggest that Putin’s personal wealth stood at a staggering $200 billion. Such claims, originating from a major investor in Russia during the 1990s, continue to circulate and add layers to the mystery surrounding Putin’s finances.

The most iconic symbol of Putin’s alleged wealth is the Black Sea mansion, often dubbed “Putin’s Country Cottage.” Despite conflicting statements, the property, perched atop a cliff, is said to boast a marble swimming pool adorned with statues of Greek gods, an amphitheater, a state-of-the-art ice hockey rink, a Vegas-style casino, and even a nightclub. 

The mansion’s luxurious interior includes dining room furniture valued at $500,000, a bar table worth $54,000, and decked-out bathrooms featuring Italian toilet brushes priced at $850 and toilet paper holders at $1,250. Maintaining this grandeur requires an annual expenditure of $2 million by a 40-person staff, according to Fortune.

Adding to the list of Putin’s extravagances are reports of 19 other houses, 700 cars, 58 aircraft and helicopters, and a $716 million plane humorously named “The Flying Kremlin.” 

The president’s alleged ownership of a mega yacht named Scheherazade, worth a staggering $700 million, further fuels speculation about the extent of his wealth.

Putin as a KGB Agent

Putin enlisted in the KGB, the Soviet equivalent of the CIA, after completing his legal studies at Leningrad State University. He was transferred to Dresden, East Germany, in the middle of the 1980s, where he claimed to have obtained “political intelligence,” partly through the enlistment of informants. After the Berlin Wall fell, Putin reportedly stayed in Dresden and, in a bold move, stopped a mob of demonstrators from attacking 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.

First and Second Presidential Term

Yeltsin unexpectedly announced his resignation on 31 December 1999 and named Putin as acting President. Putin easily won the March 2000 election with about 53 percent of the vote. As president, he promised to end corruption and also to create a strong regulated market economy. He quickly reasserted control over Russia’s 89 regions and republics. He divided them into seven new federal districts and each was headed by a representative appointed by the president. He removed right of the regional governors to sit on the Federation Council which is the upper house of the Russian parliament. He also reduced the power of Russia’s unpopular financiers and media tycoons’ so-called “Oligarchs” by closing various media outlets and launching criminal proceedings against various leading figures. 

In Chechnya, he faced a difficult situation mainly from rebels who staged terrorist attacks in Moscow and guerilla attacks on Russian troops from the region’s mountains. He also declared a military campaign in 2002 but casualties remained high. 

In 2001, he strongly objected to U.S. President George Bush’s decision to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In 2002-2003, Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and French Pres. Jacques Chirac opposed U.S. and British plans to use force to push Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.

The economy of the country saw growth after a prolonged recession in the 1990s and so Putin was easily reelected in March 2004. In December 2007, in parliamentary elections, Putin’s party, United Russia, won an overwhelming majority of seats. A constitutional provision forced Putin to step down in 2008 and he chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.

Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister (2008-2012)

In March 2008, Dmitry Medvedev won the presidential election, and Putin was announced to be the chairman of the United Russia Party. Medvedev nominated Vladimir Putin as the country’s Prime Minister within hours of taking office on 7 May 2008. 

On 24 September 2011, at the United Russia Congress in Moscow, Medvedev officially proposed that Putin stand for the Presidency in 2012. This offer was accepted by Putin. However, on 4 March 2012, Putin was elected to a third term as the President of Russia. He resigned as United Russia chairman and handed control of the party to Medvedev. On 7 May 2012. Putin was inaugurated as President and one of his first acts after assuming office was to nominate Medvedev to serve as Prime Minister. 

Vladimir Putin’s Third Presidential Term (2012-2018)

His first year the office was characterised by a largely successful effort to stifle the protest movement. Leaders in opposition were jailed and nongovernmental organisations that received funding from abroad were labeled as “foreign agents”. In June 2013, tensions with the United States flared when U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden sought refuge in Russia after revealing the existence of a number of secret NSA programmes. 

In Russia, Snowden was allowed on the condition that, in Putin’s words, he stop “bringing harm to our American partners.” In August 2013, an attack of chemical weapons took place outside Damascus made the U.S the case for military intervention in the Syrian Civil War. In an editorial published in the New York Times, Putin urged restraint, and U.S and Russian officials brokered a deal in which Syria’s chemical weapons supply would be destroyed.

In December 2013, Putin commemorated the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the post-Soviet Constitution and ordered the release of some 25,000 individuals from Russian prisons. Also, he granted a pardon to Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was the former head of Yuko’s oil conglomerate. He was imprisoned for more than a decade.

Vladimir Putin’s Fourth Presidential Term (2018-Present)

In 2018, he won the presidential election with more than 76% votes. On 7 May 2018, his fourth term began and will last until 2024. Also, on the same day, he invited Dmitry Medvedev to form a new government. He took part in the opening of the movement along the highway section of the Crimean bridge on 15 May 2018. He signed decrees on the composition of the new Government on 18 May 2018. He further announced that he would not run for president in 2024 on 25 May 2018. He opened the 21st FIFA World Cup on 14 June 2018 and it took place in Russia for the first time. 

Dmitry Medvedev and his entire government resigned on 15 January 2020 after Vladimir Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly. Putin also suggested major constitutional amendments that could extend his political power after the presidency. It was suggested by the president that Medvedev take the newly created post of Deputy Chairman of the Security Council. 

Putin on the same day nominated Mikhail Mishustin, head of the country’s Federal Tax Service for the post of Prime Minister. The next day, he was confirmed by the State Duma to the post and appointed Prime Minister by Vladimir Putin’s decree. This was the first time a Prime Minister was confirmed without any votes against. Mishustin presented to Vladimir Putin a draft structure of his Cabinet on 21 January 2020. The president signed a decree on the structure of the Cabinet and appointed the proposed Ministers on the same day.

At the time of COVID-19 Pandemic

He was instructed to create a Working Group of the State Council on 15 March 2020 to counteract the spread of coronavirus. He appointed Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin as the head of the Group. He arranged the Russian army after a phone call with Italian PM Giuseppe Conte to send military medics, special disinfection vehicles, and other medical equipment to Italy.

He also visited a hospital in Moscow’s Kommunarka on 24 March 2020 where patients with coronavirus are kept. He spoke with them and the doctors. He worked remotely from his office at Novo-Ogaryovo. 

He announced in a televised address to the nation on 25 March that the 22 April constitutional referendum would be postponed because of coronavirus. He also announced that the next week would be a nationwide paid holiday and urged Russians to stay at home.

He also provided and announced a list of measures of social protection, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and changes in fiscal policy. He also announced measures for microenterprises, small- and medium-sized businesses deferring tax payments except for Russia’s value-added tax for the next six months. Also cut the size of social contributions in half, deferring social security contributions, deferring loan repayments for the next six months, a six-month moratorium on fines, debt collection, and creditors’ applications for bankruptcy of debtor enterprises.

He again issued an address on 2 April 2020, in which he announced prolongation of the non-working time until 30 April. Putin said that he was fully vaccinated against the disease with the Sputnik V Vaccine in June 2021. 

Also Read: Dr. Sudhanshu Trivedi (Politician) Biography

Vladimir Putin: Awards & Honours

Civilian Awards presented by various countries

Vladimir Putin: a biographical timeline

• Oct. 7, 1952 Vladimir V. Putin is born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the only child of a factory foreman and his wife.
• 1975 Putin graduates from the law department of Leningrad State University.
• 1975 Putin joins the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
• 1983 Putin marries Lyudmila, a specialist in foreign languages. (They now have two teenage daughters, Katya and Masha.)
• 1985-90 Putin is assigned to work for the KGB in East Germany.
• 1990 Putin becomes assistant rector for international affairs at Leningrad State University. He also serves as an adviser to the chairman of the Leningrad City Council.
• 1991-94 Putin serves as chairman of the foreign relations committee of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office.
• Aug. 20, 1991 Putin resigns from the KGB.
• 1994-96 Putin serves as first deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg city government and chairman of the committee for external relations.
• August 1996 Putin is transferred to Moscow to work as President Boris Yeltsin’s first deputy manager.
• March 1997 Putin becomes Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff in charge of the Main Control Department.
• May 1998 Putin is named presidential first deputy chief of staff in charge of Russian regions.
• July 1998 – August 1999 Putin serves as director of the Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the KGB.
• March – August 1999 Putin also serves as Russian Security Council secretary.
• August 1999 Putin is appointed prime minister.
• Dec. 31, 1999 Yeltsin abruptly resigns, naming Putin acting president pending elections.
• March 26, 2000 Putin is elected president of Russia. He wins in the first round, capturing just over 50 percent of the vote.
• April 2000 During a visit to London — his first trip to the West since being elected — Putin defends Russia’s war in Chechnya.
• May 7, 2000 Putin is sworn in as Russia’s second democratically elected president. “We have a common goal: a strong Russia,” he says.
• June 2000 Putin holds a summit in Moscow with U.S. President Bill Clinton. The leaders sign two arms control agreements but disagree on U.S. plans for a national missile defense system.
• July 8, 2000 Putin gives his first state of the nation address, expressing concerns about Russia’s falling living standards.
• July 18, 2000 Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin sign a joint statement opposing U.S. plans to build missile shields over North America and Asia.
• Aug. 12, 2000 The Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea, with a crew of 118 aboard. There are no survivors. Putin says he feels responsible for the accident but denies delays in rescue efforts.
• Dec. 14, 2000 Putin pardons Edmond Pope, freeing the American from a 20-year prison sentence for espionage.
• December 2000 Putin meets in Cuba with Fidel Castro, re-establishing ties between Havana and Moscow that broke down when the Soviet Union collapsed.
• March 2001 The United States and Russia expel 50 of each other’s diplomats over alleged espionage. Putin downplays the expulsions’ effects on bilateral ties.
• March 28, 2001 Putin announces the biggest Cabinet shakeup since his election. Among the changes, he appoints Russia’s first civilian defense minister.
• April 2001 The Russian government takes over the NTV television station and cracks down on other independent media outlets. Putin is accused of silencing independent voices.
• June 16, 2001 Putin, in his first summit with President Bush, says Russia and the United States “are not enemies. They do not threaten each other. And they could be fully good allies.”
• July 18, 2001 Putin holds his first formal news conference, where he praises Bush as “sincere.”
• September 2001 Russia pledges to help the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Putin promises increased arms supplies to anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
• Nov. 13-15, 2001 Putin, President Bush hold summit meetings in Washington and at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Latest News 2024

Also Read: Putin, the president of Russia, says he is willing to engage with Ukraine and has prepared a large dossier!

Putin to visit Turkey in first trip to Nato country since Ukraine War

Turkey said Vladimir Putin is expected to visit soon, in what would be the Russian leader’s first trip to a NATO-member country since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine two years ago. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to meet with Putin primarily to discuss energy cooperation and security in Syria, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told AHaber television on Sunday. The war in Ukraine will likely be a central topic, Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov said last week, according to Interfax. Putin will visit Turkey on Feb. 12, Reuters reported last week. 

Putin’s trips abroad have been limited due to the risk of possible arrest on a warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.

Turkey Signals Preference to Retain Russian S-400s in F-35 Row

The ICC issued the warrant against Putin on March 17 for war crimes related to the alleged abduction of children from Ukraine. Turkey isn’t a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the tribunal and isn’t bound by its decisions.

Erdogan has sought to broker peace between the warring parties and to revive a UN-backed deal that he helped engineer in 2022 that had allowed Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea. Russia abandoned the deal in July 2023, and Erdogan has urged world leaders to meet some of Russia’s demands including facilitating insurance of Russian food and fertilizer exports by Lloyd’s of London and to reconnect Moscow to the SWIFT system for international payments to persuade Putin to return to the deal.

“Our president will definitely discuss this issue with Putin,” Fidan said, signaling a new mechanism for Ukrainian grain exports. 

“It is an issue that we are currently discussing with Russia. There are talks going especially between the UN, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey,” he added. “We can develop a new method for bringing grain to world markets.”

Turkey’s Erdogan Rejects ‘Negative Attitude’ Toward Putin

Russia and Ukraine are both major producers of grain, and the war has increasingly threatened the safe passage of shipments. While Ukraine transported some of its grain via its Black Sea corridor since mid-September, strong shipments are still needed to clear last year’s larger-than-expected harvest.

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How long has Vladimir Putin been president? See how Russian elections work

Exactly one month after the suspicious death of Alexei Navalny , a prominent critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in a penal colony, the country gears up for its presidential election. Four candidates are in the race, and voting will happen Friday to Sunday. Putin, 71, is expected to claim his fifth tenure. 

Backed by state-run media and an intensified crackdown on free speech and public dissent, Putin’s approval rating inside Russia has reached 80% ahead of the vote, according to the Levada Center, a Russian nongovernmental polling and sociological research organization. 

It is not clear, however, how popular the president really is, considering that citizens are afraid of opposing the regime. Research has shown that pressure to conform helps account for Putin’s large approval increase after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and the same happened after the invasion of the rest of Ukraine in 2022.

Who is running against Vladimir Putin? 

Russia’s registration of candidates closed on Feb 10, with Putin and three other candidates approved for the ballot. All the candidates support the war in Ukraine, and the most outspoken anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, was barred from running because of “flaws in the collection of signatures,” according to the Russian Central Election Commission.

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How does this election echo abroad?

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Navalny, has accused Putin of having her husband murdered and called on the European Union to refuse to recognize the results of the vote, saying that “a president who assassinated his main political opponent cannot be legitimate by definition."

Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, also have blamed Putin for Navalny's death and warned of consequences. They have provided no evidence.

For the first time, elections also will take place in what Russia calls its new territories − parts of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces. Baltic NATO countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania criticize that in a joint statement , calling Russia’s plan to hold elections in "temporarily occupied and illegally annexed" Ukrainian territory "a grave violation of international law, the UN Charter, and Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity." 

How do presidential elections work in Russia? 

The president is elected by a popular vote in a two-round system every six years. The original 1993 Russian Constitution specified a four-year term, but in 2008, Dmitry Medvedev, who was president between Putin’s tenures from 2008 to 2012, passed an amendment extending the term by two years.

If no one wins an absolute majority in the first election, a second round is held between the two leading contenders, and the winner is required to win more than 50% of the vote.  Elected presidents have a two-term limit. 

So why can Putin run again? 

The 2008 Medvedev amendment wasn’t the only constitutional change. A constitutional referendum in 2020 effectively allowed Putin to run for a further two six-year terms after 2024 by removing “in a row” from the article regulating presidential term limits. That discounted his previous and current terms and made it possible for Putin to theoretically remain in the Kremlin until 2036 instead of having to step down this year. 

The amendment also placed the Russian Constitution above international law. 

How long has Putin been president of Russia? 

After working as a KGB agent in Dresden, East Germany, from 1985 to 1990, Putin returned to Russia and switched careers, working in administration in St. Petersburg and later Moscow. In 1999, he was appointed prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin. 

When Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, Putin was handed the presidency on the last day of 1999 and has since been leader of the Russian Federation for longer than any other ruler since Josef Stalin, besting even Leonid Brezhnev’s 1964-1982 tenure. 

Are elections in Russia free? 

According to Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) election observers, the last presidential election in Russia in 2018 was well-administered but restricted in terms of fundamental freedoms and lack of competition.

The OSCE report stated that “while candidates could generally campaign freely, the extensive and uncritical coverage of the incumbent president in most media resulted in an uneven playing field,” and it added that media owned or supported by the state remains the dominant source of political information in Russia. 

Apart from benefiting from preferential media treatment, Putin’s 2018 reelection campaign also benefited from procedural irregularities during the vote count and the disqualification of his most influential rival, Navalny, according to Freedom House , a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that rates democracies across the world. Navalny was not allowed to run for office because of a politically motivated criminal conviction. Other prominent critics who could challenge Putin on the ballot are either in jail or living abroad. 

After the crackdown on free speech in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, most independent media organizations have been banned, many Russian journalists are in exile, and foreign correspondents have either been expelled or jailed, including The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich . 

Previous election results

What is the political system in russia .

The 1993 Constitution established a semi-presidential system for the Russian Federation.