Vladimir Putin Biography

Vladimir Putin was elected president of the Russian Federation in 2012, beginning his third full term as president of Russia since taking over as the hand-picked successor of Boris Yeltsin in 1999.

After earning a law degree in 1975, Vladimir Putin joined the KGB, the security force of the former Soviet Union.

He spent years working primarily in East Germany, then left the service in 1991 and became active in the politics of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad).

He was brought to Moscow by Yeltsin in 1996 and served as an administrator in the Kremlin and an official for the security organizations which replaced the KGB.

In 1999, Putin became Yeltsin’s fifth prime minister in 17 months, then became acting president when Yeltsin abruptly left office.

He was officially elected to the office in 2000 and then re-elected in a landslide vote in March of 2004. As president he gained a reputation as a clever and ruthless political operator with a hunger for Russian power and not too much concern for the niceties of democracy or diplomacy.

He stepped down in 2008 (as required by term limits) and was replaced by his own hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev then installed Putin as prime minister, a move which left Putin, as The New York Times put it, as “the country’s dominant politician, with a firm grip on power.”

This seemed to be proved out in March of 2012, when Vladimir Putin was again elected president for a fresh six-year term. He named Medvedev as prime minister, seeming to confirm suspicions that he’d been in charge all along.

Putin was re-elected in 2018. Again, Medvedev was made the prime minister. In January of 2020, Medvedev and the entire Russian government resigned so that a new power-sharing agreement could be worked out between the president, the parliament and the prime minister.

Though Putin’s relationship with the United States was historically icy, that changed when Donald Trump took office as President. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials accused Putin of meddling in the 2016 election in an effort to put Trump in the White House. After Trump was elected, Putin’s power and reputation grew, in part because of Trump’s open admiration and his refusal to condemn Russia or Putin.