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WIKIMAG n. 9 - Agosto 2013
Vladimir Putin
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian:
Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин,
IPA: [vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪr
vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈputʲɪn] (
listen); born 7 October 1952) is a
Russian
politician who has been the
President of Russia since 7 May 2012. Putin previously served as
President from 2000 to 2008, and as
Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to
2012. Putin was also previously the Chairman of the
United Russia political party.
For sixteen years Putin was an officer in the
KGB, rising
to the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel, before he retired to enter politics in his
native
Saint Petersburg in 1991. He moved to
Moscow
in 1996 and joined President
Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming
Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin resigned
unexpectedly. Putin won the subsequent
2000 presidential election and was
re-elected in 2004. Because of
constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run
for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008.
Dmitry Medvedev won the
2008 presidential election and appointed Putin as
Prime Minister, beginning a period of so-called
"tandemocracy".[1]
In September 2011, following a change in the law, Putin announced that
he would seek a third, non-consecutive term as President in the
2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to
large-scale protests in many Russian cities. He won the election in
March 2012 and is serving an increased, six-year term.[2][3]
Many of Putin's actions are regarded by the domestic opposition and
foreign observers as undemocratic.[4]
The 2011
Democracy Index stated that Russia has been in "a long process of
regression culminated in a move from a hybrid to an
authoritarian regime" under Putin,[5]
and American diplomatic cables leaked by
WikiLeaks allege that Russia has become a "virtual
mafia state."[6][7]
Some critics describe him as a
dictator,[8][9][10]
allegations which Putin adamantly denies.
Putin has been widely credited[by
whom?] with ending the
crisis of the 1990s.[11][12]
During Putin's first premiership and presidency (1999–2008), real
incomes increased by a factor of 2.5, real wages more than tripled;
unemployment and poverty more than halved and the Russians'
self-assessed life satisfaction rose significantly.[13]
Putin's first presidency was marked by high economic growth: the
Russian economy grew for eight straight years, seeing
GDP increase by 72% in
PPP (sixfold in nominal).[13][14][15][16][17]
These achievements have been ascribed by analysts to good macroeconomic
management, important fiscal reforms, increasing capital inflows, access
to low-cost external financing and a five-fold increase in the
price of oil and gas which constitute the majority of Russian
exports.[18][unreliable
source?][19][20][21]
As Russia's president, Putin passed into law a flat
income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal
codes.[20][22]
As Prime Minister, Putin oversaw large scale
military and
police reform. His
energy policy has affirmed Russia's position as an
energy superpower.[23]
Putin supported high-tech industries such as the
nuclear and
defence industries. A rise in foreign investment[24]
contributed to a boom in such sectors as the
automotive industry.
Ancestry, early life and education
Putin's father, Vladimir Spiridonovich
Putin was born on 7 October 1952, in
Leningrad,
Russian SFSR,
Soviet Union (modern day
Saint Petersburg,
Russia),[25]
to parents Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna
Putina (née Shelomova; 1911–1998). His mother was a factory
worker, and his father was a
conscript in the
Soviet Navy, where he served in the
submarine fleet in the early 1930s, and later served in the
NKVD during
World War II.[26][27][28][29]
Two elder brothers were born in the mid-1930s; one died within a few
months of birth, while the second succumbed to
diphtheria during the
siege of Leningrad in World War II.
Putin with his mother, Maria Ivanovna, in July 1958
Vladimir Putin's paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich Putin
(1879–1965), was employed at
Vladimir Lenin's
dacha at
Gorki as a cook, and after Lenin's death in 1924, he continued to
work for Lenin's wife,
Nadezhda Krupskaya. He would later cook for
Joseph Stalin when the
Soviet leader visited one of his
dachas in the
Moscow
region. Spiridon later was employed at a dacha belonging to the Moscow
City Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which the young Putin would
visit him.[30]
The ancestry of Vladimir Putin has been described as a mystery with
no records surviving of any ancestors of any people with the surname
"Putin" beyond his grandfather Spiridon Ivanovich.
His autobiography, Ot Pervogo Litsa (English: In the First
Person),[26]
which is based on Putin's interviews, speaks of humble beginnings,
including early years in a communal apartment in Leningrad. On 1
September 1960, he started at School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, just across
from his house. By fifth grade he was one of a few in a class of more
than 45 pupils who was not yet a member of the
Pioneers, largely because of his rowdy behavior. In sixth grade he
started taking sport seriously in the form of
sambo and then
judo. In
his youth, Putin was eager to emulate the intelligence officer
characters played on the
Soviet screen by actors such as
Vyacheslav Tikhonov and
Georgiy Zhzhonov.[31]
Putin graduated from the International Law branch of the Law
Department of the
Leningrad State University in 1975, writing his final thesis on
international law.[32]
His PhD thesis was titled "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources
Under the Formation of Market Relations" and it argued that Russian
economic success would depend on creating national energy champions.[33]
While at university he became a member of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and remained a member until the
party was dissolved in December 1991.[34]
Also at the University he met
Anatoly Sobchak who later played an important role in Putin's
career. Anatoly Sobchak was at the time an
Assistant Professor and lectured Putin's class on
Business Law (khozyaystvennoye pravo).[35]
KGB career
Putin joined the
KGB in 1975
upon graduation, and underwent a year's training at the 401st KGB school
in Okhta[disambiguation
needed], Leningrad. He then went on to work briefly
in the Second Chief Directorate (counter-intelligence)
before he was transferred to the
First Chief Directorate, where among his duties was the monitoring
of foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad.[36][37]
From 1985 to 1990, the KGB stationed Putin in
Dresden,
East Germany.[38]
Following the collapse of the East German government, Putin was recalled
to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1991 he
assumed a position with the International Affairs section of
Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector
Yuriy Molchanov.[37]
In his new position, Putin maintained surveillance on the student body
and kept an eye out for recruits. It was during his stint at the
university that Putin grew reacquainted with his former professor
Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of Leningrad.[39]
Putin finally resigned from the active state security services with
the rank of
Lieutenant colonel on 20 August 1991 (with some attempts to resign
made earlier),[39]
on the second day of
the KGB-supported abortive putsch against Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev.[40]
Putin later explained his decision: "As soon as the coup began, I
immediately decided which side I was on", though he also noted that the
choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with "the
organs".[41]
Early
political career
Saint
Petersburg administration
In May 1990, Putin was appointed Mayor Sobchak's advisor on
international affairs. On 28 June 1991, he was appointed head of the
Committee for External Relations of the
Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office, with responsibility for promoting
international relations and foreign investments. The Committee also
registered business ventures in Saint Petersburg. Less than one year
later, Putin was investigated by a commission of the city legislative
council. Commission deputies
Marina Salye and
Yury Gladkov concluded that Putin understated prices and permitted
the export of metals valued at $93 million, in exchange for foreign food
aid that never arrived.[42][43]
Despite the commission's recommendation that Putin be fired, Putin
remained head of the Committee for External Relations until 1996.[44][45]
From 1994 to 1997, Putin was appointed to other positions in Saint
Petersburg. In March 1994, he became first deputy head of the city
administration. From 1995 through June 1997, he led the Saint Petersburg
branch of the pro-government
Our Home Is Russia political party.[46]
From 1995 through June 1997 he was also the head of the Advisory Board
of the JSC Newspaper
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti.[46]
Moscow career
Putin as
FSB director, 1998
In 1996,
Anatoly Sobchak lost the Saint Petersburg mayoral election to
Vladimir Yakovlev. Putin was called to Moscow and in June 1996
became a Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department
headed by
Pavel Borodin. He occupied this position until March 1997. During
his tenure Putin was responsible for the foreign property of the state
and organized transfer of the former assets of the Soviet Union and
Communist Party to the Russian Federation.[35]
On 26 March 1997, President
Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin deputy chief of
Presidential Staff, which he remained until May 1998, and chief of
the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management
Department (until June 1998). His predecessor on this position was
Alexei Kudrin and the successor was
Nikolai Patrushev, both future prominent politicians and Putin's
associates.[35]
On 27 June 1997, at the
Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, guided by rector
Vladimir Litvinenko, Putin defended his
Candidate of Science dissertation in economics, titled "The
Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market
Relations".[47]
When Putin later became president, the dissertation became a target of
plagiarism accusations by fellows at the
Brookings Institution; though the allegedly plagiarised study was
referenced to[48][49]
the authors of the allegation felt sure it constituted plagiarism,
though they were unsure as to whether it was "intentional";[48][50]
the dissertation committee denied the accusations.[49]
In his dissertation,[citation
needed] and in a later article published in 1999,
Putin advocated the idea of so-called
National champions, a concept that would later become central to his
political thinking.
On 25 May 1998, Putin was appointed First Deputy Chief of
Presidential Staff for regions, replacing
Viktoriya Mitina; and, on 15 July, the Head of the Commission for
the preparation of agreements on the
delimitation of power of regions and the federal center attached to
the President, replacing
Sergey Shakhray. After Putin's appointment, the commission completed
no such agreements, although during Shakhray's term as the Head of the
Commission there were 46 agreements signed.[51]
Later, after becoming President Putin canceled all those agreements.[35]
On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the
FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin
occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the
Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its
Secretary on 29 March 1999.
First
Premiership (1999)
On 9 August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed one of three First
Deputy Prime Ministers, which enabled him later on that day, as the
previous government led by
Sergei Stepashin had been sacked, to be appointed acting Prime
Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President
Boris Yeltsin.[52]
Yeltsin also announced that he wanted to see Putin as his successor.
Later, that same day, Putin agreed to run for the presidency.[53]
On 16 August, the
State Duma approved his appointment as Prime Minister with 233 votes
in favour (vs. 84 against, 17 abstained),[54]
while a simple majority of 226 was required, making him Russia's fifth
PM in fewer than eighteen months. On his appointment, few expected
Putin, virtually unknown to the general public, to last any longer than
his predecessors. He was initially regarded as a Yeltsin loyalist; like
other prime ministers of Boris Yeltsin, Putin did not choose ministers
himself, his cabinet being determined by the presidential
administration.[55]
Yeltsin's main opponents and would-be successors, Moscow Mayor
Yuriy Luzhkov and former Chairman of the Russian Government
Yevgeniy Primakov, were already campaigning to replace the ailing
president, and they fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a
potential successor. Putin's
law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the
renewed crisis in the North Caucasus, which started when the
Islamic International Brigade based in Chechnya invaded a
neighboring region starting the
War in Dagestan, soon combined to raise Putin's popularity and
allowed him to overtake all rivals.
While not formally associated with any party, Putin pledged his
support to the newly formed
Unity Party,[56]
which won the second largest percentage of the popular vote (23.3%) in
the December 1999
Duma
elections, and in turn he was supported by it.
Acting Presidency
Putin landing in Grozny in a
Su-27 fighter jet (20 March 2000)
On 31 December 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to
the constitution, Putin became
Acting President of the Russian Federation. On assuming this role,
Putin went on a previously scheduled visit to Russian troops in
Chechnya.[citation
needed]
The first
Presidential Decree that Putin signed, on 31 December 1999, was
titled "On guarantees for former president of the Russian Federation and
members of his family".[57][58]
This ensured that "corruption charges against the outgoing President and
his relatives" would not be pursued, although this claim is not strictly
verifiable.[clarification
needed][59]
Later, on 12 February 2001, Putin signed a
federal law on guarantees for former presidents and their families,
which replaced the similar
decree.
While his opponents had been preparing for an election in June 2000,
Yeltsin's resignation resulted in the
Presidential elections being held within three months, on 26 March
2000; Putin won in the first round with 53% of the vote.[60]
First Presidential term (2000–2004)
Vladimir Putin was inaugurated president on 7 May 2000. He appointed
Minister of Finance
Mikhail Kasyanov as his Prime minister. Having announced his
intention to consolidate power in the country into a strict vertical, in
May 2000 he issued a decree dividing 89
federal subjects of Russia between 7
federal districts overseen by representatives of his in order to
facilitate federal administration.
Putin taking the presidential oath with
Boris Yeltsin looking on (7 May 2000)
During his first term in office, he moved to curb the political
ambitions of some of the Yeltsin-era
oligarchs such as former Kremlin insider
Boris Berezovsky, who had "helped Mr. Putin enter the family, and
funded the party that formed Mr. Putin's parliamentary base", according
to BBC profile.[61][62]
At the same time, according to
Vladimir Solovyev, it was
Alexey Kudrin who was instrumental in Putin's assignment to the
Presidential Administration of Russia to work with
Pavel Borodin,[63]
and according to Solovyev, Berezovsky was proposing
Igor Ivanov rather than Putin as a new president.[64][65]
Between 2000 and 2004, and ending following the Yukos-affair, Putin
apparently won a power-struggle with the oligarchs, reaching a
'grand-bargain' with them. This bargain allowed the oligarchs to
maintain most of their powers, in exchange for their explicit support -
and alignment with - his government.[66][67]
A new
group of business magnates, such as
Gennady Timchenko,
Vladimir Yakunin,
Yuriy Kovalchuk,
Sergey Chemezov, with close personal ties to Putin, also emerged.
Russia's legal reform continued productively during Putin's first
term. In particular, Putin succeeded in the codification of land law and
tax law, where progress had been slow during Yeltsin's administration,
because of Communist and oligarch opposition, respectively. Other legal
reforms included new codes on labour, administrative, criminal,
commercial and civil procedural law, as well as a major statute on the
Bar.[22]
The first major challenge to Putin's popularity came in August 2000,
when he was criticised for his alleged mishandling of the
Kursk submarine disaster.[68]
In December 2000, Putin sanctioned the law to change the
National Anthem of Russia. At the time the Anthem had music by
Glinka and no words. The change was to restore (with a minor
modification) the music of the post-1944
Soviet anthem by
Alexandrov, while the new text was composed by
Sergey Mikhalkov, who previously had authored the lyrics of the two
versions of the Soviet anthem.[69][70]
Many in the Russian press and in the international media warned that
the death of some 130 hostages in the special forces' rescue operation
during the 2002
Moscow theater hostage crisis would severely damage President
Putin's popularity. However, shortly after the siege had ended, the
Russian president was enjoying record public approval ratings – 83% of
Russians declared themselves satisfied with Putin and his handling of
the siege.[71]
A few months before the elections, Putin fired Kasyanov's cabinet and
appointed
Mikhail Fradkov to his place.
Sergey Ivanov became the first civilian in Russia to take Defense
Minister position.
In 2003, a referendum was held in Chechnya adopting a new
constitution which declares the Republic as a part of Russia. Chechnya
has been gradually stabilized with the establishment of the
parliamentary elections and a regional government.[72][73]
Throughout the
war Russia has severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement,
although sporadic violence continued to occur throughout the North
Caucasus.[74]
Second Presidential term (2004–2008)
On 14 March 2004,
Putin was elected to the presidency for a second term, receiving 71%
of the vote.[60]
The
Beslan school hostage crisis took place in September 2004, in which
hundreds died. Among the administrative measures taken after that
terrorist act, Putin launched an initiative to replace the direct
election of the Governors and Presidents of the
Federal subjects of Russia with a system whereby they would be
nominated by the President and approved or disapproved by regional
legislatures.[75][76]
In 2005 Putin created the
Public Chamber of Russia.
In 2005, the
National Priority Projects were launched to improve Russia's
health care,
education,
housing and
agriculture. The most high-profile change within the national
priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board
increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision
to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.[77]
In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin announced increasing maternity
benefits and state support of
prenatal care for women. By 2012 the demographic programmes of the
government led to a 45% increase in second child births by women, and a
60% increase in third, fourth etc. births.[78]
The continued criminal prosecution of Russia's then richest man,
President of
YUKOS company
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for fraud and
tax evasion was seen by the international press as a retaliation for
Khodorkovsky's donations to both liberal and communist opponents of the
Kremlin. The government said that Khodorkovsky was corrupting a large
segment of the Duma to prevent tax code changes such as taxes on
windfall profits and closing
offshore tax evasion vehicles. Khodorkovsky was arrested, Yukos was
bunkrupted and the company's assets were auctioned at below-market
value, with the largest share acquired by the state company
Rosneft.[79]
The fate of Yukos was seen in the West as a sign of a broader shift of
Russia towards a system of
state capitalism.[80][81]
A study by
Bank of Finland's Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT) in
2008 found that state intervention had made a positive impact on the
corporate governance of many companies in Russia: the governance was
better in companies with state control or with a stake held by the
government.[82]
Putin was criticized in the West and also by Russian liberals for
what many observers considered a wide-scale crackdown on
media freedom in Russia. On 7 October 2006,
Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed corruption in the
Russian army and its conduct in
Chechnya, was shot in the lobby of her apartment building. The death
of Politkovskaya triggered an outcry in Western media, with accusations
that, at best, Putin has failed to protect the country's new independent
media.[83][84]
When asked about the Politkovskaya murder in his interview with the
German TV channel
ARD, Putin said that her murder brings much more harm to the Russian
authorities than her writing.[85]
By 2012 the performers of the murder were arrested and named
Boris Berezovsky and
Akhmed Zakayev as a possible clients.[86]
In 2007, "Dissenters'
Marches" were organized by the opposition group
The Other Russia,[87]
led by former chess champion
Garry Kasparov and national-Bolshevist leader
Eduard Limonov. Following prior warnings, demonstrations in several
Russian cities were met by police action, which included interfering
with the travel of the protesters and the arrests of as many as 150
people who attempted to break through police lines.[88]
The Dissenters' Marches have received little support among the Russian
general public, according to polls.[89]
On 12 September 2007, Putin dissolved the government upon the request
of Prime Minister
Mikhail Fradkov. Fradkov commented that it was to give the President
a "free hand" in the run-up to the parliamentary election.
Viktor Zubkov was appointed the new prime minister.[90]
In December 2007,
United Russia won 64.24% of the popular vote in their run for
State Duma according to election preliminary results.[91]
United Russia's victory in December 2007 elections was seen by many as
an indication of strong popular support of the then Russian leadership
and its policies.[92][93]
On 8 February 2008, Putin delivered a speech before the expanded
session of the
State Council headlined "On the Strategy of Russia's Development
until 2020".[94]
In his last days in office Putin was reported to have taken a series of
steps to re-align the regional bureaucracy to make the governors report
to the prime minister rather than the president.[95][96]
The presidential site explained that "the changes... bear a refining
nature and do not affect the essential positions of the system. The key
role in estimating the effectiveness of activity of regional authority
still belongs to President of the Russian Federation."
Second Premiership (2008–2012)
Putin was barred from a third term by the Constitution. First Deputy
Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev was elected his successor. On 8 May 2008, only a day
after handing the presidency to Medvedev, Putin was appointed
Prime Minister of Russia, maintaining his political dominance.[97]
The
2008-2009 world crisis hit the Russian economy
especially hard, interrupting the flow of cheap Western credit and
investments. This coincided with tension in relationships with the
EU and the
U.S. following the
2008 South Ossetia war, in which Russia defeated the U.S. and
NATO ally
Georgia.
However, the large financial reserves, accumulated in the
Stabilization Fund of Russia in the previous period of high oil
prices, alongside the strong management helped the country to cope with
the crisis and resume economic growth since mid-2009. The Russian
government's anti-crisis measures have been praised by the
World Bank, which said in its Russia Economic Report from November
2008: "prudent fiscal management and substantial financial reserves have
protected Russia from deeper consequences of this external shock. The
government's policy response so far—swift, comprehensive, and
coordinated—has helped limit the impact."[98]
Putin himself named the overcoming of consequences of the world economic
crisis one of the two main achievements of his 2nd Premiership[78]
(the other named achievement being the
stabilisation of the size of Russia's population between 2008-2011
following the long period of demographic collapse started in the 1990s).[78]
At the
United Russia Congress in
Moscow
on 24 September 2011, Medvedev officially proposed that Putin stand for
the Presidency in 2012; an offer which Putin accepted. Given United
Russia's near-total dominance of Russian politics, many observers
believed that Putin was all but assured of a third term. The move was
expected to see Medvedev stand on the United Russia ticket in the
parliamentary elections in December, with a goal of becoming Prime
Minister at the end of his presidential term.[99]
After the
parliamentary elections on 4 December 2011, tens of thousands
Russians engaged in
protests against alleged electoral fraud, the largest protests in
Putin's time; protesters criticized Putin and
United Russia and demanded annulment of the election results.[100]
However, those protests, organized by the leaders of the Russian
"non-systemic opposition", sparked the fear of a
colour revolution in society, and a number of "anti-Orange"
counter-protests (the name alludes to the
Orange Revolution in
Ukraine)
and rallies of Putin supporters were carried out, surpassing in scale
the opposition protests.[101][102][103]
Third Presidential term (2012–present)
Putin taking the presidential oath at his 3rd inauguration
ceremony (7 May 2012)
On 4 March 2012, Putin won the
2012 Russian presidential elections in the first round, with 63.6%
of the vote.[60]
While extraordinary measures were taken to make the elections
transparent, including the usage of
webcams
on the vast majority of polling stations, the vote was criticized by
Russian opposition and some international bodies for perceived
irregularities.[citation
needed]. Several heads of states around the world
congratulated Putin on winning elections. Chinese Premier
Hu
Jintao congratulated Vladimir Putin on taking office as Russian
president, and wished the Russian people greater achievements in
developing their country under Putin's leadership.[104]
The Prime Minister of
India,
Manmohan Singh said "Your success in these elections is an
affirmation by the Russian people of your vision of a strong, prosperous
and democratic Russia," and added that he "deeply appreciated the
personal commitment and attention that you have brought to nurturing the
India-Russia strategic partnership over the last 12 years".[105]
The President of
Pakistan,
Asif Ali Zardari called the election results a "resounding victory".[106]
Venezuela President
Hugo Chavez personally congratulated Putin on his victory, calling
Putin "a driving force behind strategic ties of cooperation between
Venezuela and Russia."[107]
Anti-Putin protests took place during and directly after the
presidential campaign. The most notorious protest was the 21 February
Pussy Riot performance, and subsequent trial.[108]
As well, an estimated 8,000-20,000 protesters gathered in Moscow on 6
May.[109][110]
On 6 May, eighty people were injured in confrontations with police,[111]
450 were arrested, with another 120 arrests taking place the following
day.[112]
Putin was
inaugurated in the
Kremlin
on 7 May 2012. On his first day as President, Putin issued 14
Presidential decrees, including a lengthy one stating wide-ranging
goals for the
Russian economy. Other decrees concerned
education, housing, skilled-labor training,
relations with the European Union, the
defense industry, inter-ethnic relations, and other policy areas
dealt with in
Putin's programme articles issued during the Presidential campaign.[113][114]
In 2012 and 2013, Putin and the United Russia backed stricter
legislation against the rights of the
LGBT
community in Russia, first in
Saint Petersburg,
Archangelsk and
Novosibirsk, but a law against "homosexual propaganda" (which
prohibits such symbols as the
rainbow flag as well as published works containing homosexual
content) was adopted by
State Duma in June 2013.[115][116][117][118][119]
In June 2013 Putin attended a televised rally of the
All-Russia People's Front where he was elected head of the movement,[120]
which was set up in 2011.[121]
According to journalist
Steve Rosenberg, the movement is intended to "reconnect the Kremlin
to the Russian people" and one day, if necessary, replace the
increasingly unpopular
United Russia party that currently backs Putin.[122]
Policies
Domestic policies
Putin's domestic policies, especially early in his first presidency,
were aimed at creating a strict "vertical of power". On 13 May 2000, he
issued a decree dividing the 89
federal subjects of Russia between 7
federal districts overseen by representatives named by himself in
order to facilitate federal administration. Putin also pursued a policy
of enlargement of federal subjects: their number was reduced from 89 in
2000 to the present 83 after the
autonomous okrugs of Russia were merged with their parent subjects.
On 13 May 2000, Putin divided Russia into 7
federal districts. On 19 January 2010, the new 8th North
Caucasian Federal District (shown here in purple) was split
from Southern Federal District.
According to Stephen White, Russia under the presidency of Putin made
it clear that it had no intention of establishing a "second edition" of
the American or British political system, but rather a system that was
closer to Russia's own traditions and circumstances.[123]
Putin's administration has often been described as a "sovereign
democracy".[124]
First proposed by
Vladislav Surkov in February 2006, the term quickly gained currency
within Russia and arguably unified various political elites around it.
According to its proponents, the government's actions and policies ought
above all to enjoy popular support within Russia itself and not be
determined from outside the country.[125][126]
In July 2000, according to a law proposed by him and approved by the
Federal Assembly of Russia, Putin gained the right to dismiss heads
of the federal subjects. In 2004, the direct election of governors by
popular vote was ended. This was seen by Putin as a necessary move to
stop separatist tendencies and get rid of those governors who were
connected with organised crime.[127]
The measure proved to be temporary: in 2012, as proposed by Putin's
successor Dmitry Medvedev, the direct election of governors was
re-introduced.[128]
Along with the return of elected governors, Medvedev's reforms also
simplified the registration of political parties and reduced the number
of signatures required by non-parliamentary parties and independent
candidates to participate in elections,[128]
thus reverting or further loosening the restrictions imposed by previous
Putin-endorsed legislation. Notably, the tough electoral legislation has
been among the government actions effected under Putin's presidency that
have been criticised by many independent Russian media outlets and
Western commentators as anti-democratic.[129][130]
During his first term in office, Putin moved to curb the political
ambitions of some of the Yeltsin-era
oligarchs, resulting in the exile or imprisonment of such people as
Boris Berezovsky,
Vladimir Gusinsky,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky; other oligarchs soon joined Putin's camp.[citation
needed]
Putin presided over an intensified fight with
organised crime and
terrorism that resulted in two times lower murder rates by 2011,[131]
as well as significant reduction in the numbers of terrorist acts by the
late 2000s (decade).[132]
Putin succeeded in codifying land law and tax law and promulgated new
codes on labour, administrative, criminal, commercial and civil
procedural law.[22]
Under Medvedev's presidency, Putin's government implemented some key
reforms in the area of state security, the
Russian police reform and the
Russian military reform.
Economic policy
Russian
GDP since the end of the
Soviet Union. The Russian term for GDP is ВВП
(VVP) which coincides with the initials of Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin and is often used as a shortcut when
writing or speaking about him.
Under the Putin administration the economy made
real gains of an average 7% per year (2000: 10%, 2001: 5.1%, 2002:
4.7%, 2003: 7.3%, 2004: 7.2%, 2005: 6.4%, 2006: 8.2%, 2007: 8.5%),[133]
making it the 7th largest economy in the world in
purchasing power. Russia's
nominal
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased 6 fold, climbing from 22nd to
10th largest in the world. In 2007, Russia's GDP exceeded that of
Russian SFSR in 1990, meaning it has overcome the devastating
consequences of the
1998 financial crisis and preceding recession in the 1990s.[16]
During Putin's eight years in office, industry grew by 76%,
investments increased by 125%,[16]
and agricultural production and construction increased as well. Real
incomes more than doubled and the average monthly salary increased
sevenfold from $80 to $640.[14][17]
From 2000 to 2006 the volume of consumer credit increased 45 times[134][135]
and the middle class grew from 8 million to 55 million. The number of
people living below the poverty line decreased from 30% in 2000 to 14%
in 2008.[16][136]
In 2001, Putin, who has advocated liberal economic policies,
introduced a
flat
tax rate of 13%;[137][138]
the corporate rate of tax was also reduced from 35 percent to 24
percent;[137]
Small businesses also get better treatment. The old system with high tax
rates has been replaced by a new system where companies can choose
either a 6-percent tax on gross revenue or a 15-percent tax on profits.[137]
The overall tax burden is lower in Russia than in most European
countries.[139]
A central concept in Putin's economic thinking was the creation of
so-called
National champions, vertically integrated companies in strategic
sectors that are expected not only to seek profit, but also to "advance
the interests of the nation". Examples of such companies include
Gazprom,
Rosneft
and
United Aircraft Corporation.[140]
Before the Putin era, in 1998, over 60% of industrial turnover in
Russia was based on barter and various monetary surrogates. The use of
such alternatives to money has now fallen out of favour, boosting
economic productivity significantly. Besides raising wages and
consumption, Putin's government has received broad praise also for
eliminating this problem.[141]
Some oil revenue went to the
stabilization fund established in 2004. The fund accumulated oil
revenue, allowing Russia to repay all of the Soviet Union's debts by
2005. In early 2008, it was split into the Reserve Fund (designed to
protect Russia from possible global financial shocks) and the National
Welfare Fund, whose revenues will be used for a pension reform.[16]
Inflation remained a problem however, as between 1999–2007 it was
kept at the forecast ceiling only twice, and in 2007 the inflation
exceeded that of 2006, continuing an upward trend at the beginning of
2008.[16]
The Russian economy is still commodity-driven despite its growth.
Payments from the fuel and energy sector in the form of customs duties
and taxes accounted for nearly half of the federal budget's revenues.
The large majority of Russia's exports are made up of raw materials and
fertilizers,[16]
although exports as a whole accounted for only 8.7% of the GDP in 2007,
compared to 20% in 2000.[142]
In December 2011, after 15 years of negotiations, Russia finally
joined the
World Trade Organisation. The accession to WTO was expected to be
ratified by Russian Parliament in the spring of 2012.
Industrial
development
To boost the market share of locally produced vehicles and support
the
Russia's automotive industry, the government under Putin implemented
several protectionist measures and launched programs to attract foreign
producers into the country. In late 2005, the government enacted
legislation to create
special economic zones (SEZ) with the aim of encouraging investments
by foreign automotive companies. The benefits of operating in the
special economic zones include tax allowances, abolishment of asset and
land taxes and protection against changes in the tax regime. Some
regions also provide extensive support for large investors (over
$100 million.) These include
Saint Petersburg/Leningrad
Oblast,
Kaluga Oblast and
Kaliningrad Oblast.[143]
Under Putin as President and Premier, most of the world's largest
automotive companies opened plants in Russia, including
Ford Motor Company,
Toyota,
General Motors,
Nissan,
Hyundai Motor,
Suzuki,
Magna International,
Scania
and MAN SE.
In 2005, Putin initiated an industry consolidation programme to bring
the main aircraft producing companies under a single umbrella
organization, the
United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). The aim was optimize production
lines and minimise losses. The programme was divided in three parts:
reorganization and crisis management (2007–2010), evolution of existing
projects (2010–2015) and further progress within the newly created
structure (2015–2025).[144]
The UAC, one of the so-called
national champions and comparable to
EADS in
Europe,
enjoyed considerable financial support from the Russian government, and
injected money to the companies it had acquired to improve their
financial standing. The deliveries of civilian aircraft increased to 6
in 2005, and in 2009 the industry delivered 15 civilian aircraft, worth
12.5 billion roubles, mostly to domestic customers.[145]
Since then Russia has successfully tested the
fifth generation jet fighter,
Sukhoi PAK FA, and started the commercial production of the
regional airliner
Sukhoi Superjet 100, as well as started developing a number of other
major projects.
In a similar fashion, Putin created the
United Shipbuilding Corporation in 2007, which led to the recovery[citation
needed] of
shipbuilding in Russia. Since 2006, much efforts were put into
consolidation and development of the
Rosatom Nuclear Energy State Corporation, which led to the renewed
construction of
nuclear power plants in Russia as well as a vast activity of Rosatom
abroad, buying huge shares in world's leading
uranium
production companies and building nuclear power plants in many
countries, including
Iran,
China,
Vietnam
and
Belarus.[citation
needed] In 2007, the
Russian Nanotechnology Corporation was established, aimed to boost
the
science and technology and high-tech industry in Russia.[146]
Energy policy
Under Putin, Russia strengthened its position as a key
oil and
gas supplier to much of Europe.
In the
2000s (decade) Russia's oil and gas wealth was transformed into the
country's well-being and international influence, and Russia was
frequently been described in the media as an
energy superpower.[23]
Putin oversaw that the growing taxation of oil and gas exports filled in
the Russian budget, while oil and gas prices, production, and exports
all significantly grew.
Putin sought to
Russia's large share on the European energy market by building the
submerged gas pipelines bypassing
Ukraine
and the
New Europe (the countries which were often seen as non-reliable
transit partners by Russia, especially following
Russia-Ukraine gas disputes of the late 2000s (decade)). The
pipeline projects backed by Putin include the
Blue Stream from
Russia
to Turkey
(build on the
Black
Sea bed),
Nord Stream from Russia to
Germany
(the longest sub-sea pipeline in the world, built through the
Baltic Sea) and the planned
South Stream from Russia to the
Balkans
and Italy
(via the Black Sea). Russia also undermined the rival pipeline project
Nabucco by buying the
Turkmen gas and redirecting it into Russian pipelines.
On the other hand Russia diversified its export markets by building
the
Trans-Siberian oil pipeline to the markets of
China,
Japan and
Korea, as
well as the
Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok gas pipeline in the
Russian Far East. Russia has built
LNG plant on
Sakhalin and is building another one in
Primorye, aiming to increase the overseas gas exports. Meanwhile, in
the
Gulf of Finland Russia has built a major
Ust-Luga port connected to the
Baltic Pipeline System-II, which allowed to export oil without
transit through the ports of the
Baltic states. The share of processed oil slowly grows with major
oil refineries being built in
Tatarstan and other regions of Russia.
Putin also presided over resuming the construction of major
hydropower plants, such as the
Bureya Dam and the
Boguchany Dam, as well as the restoration of the
nuclear industry of Russia, with some 1 trillion rubles
($42.7 billion) allocated from the federal budget to nuclear power and
industry development before 2015.[147]
A large number of nuclear power stations and units are currently being
constructed by the state corporation
Rosatom
in Russia and abroad.
Arctic policy
Putin has sought to increase Russian military and economic presence
in the Arctic. In August 2007, a Russian expedition named
Arktika 2007, led by
Artur Chilingarov, planted a Russian flag on the seabed below the
North Pole to underline
Russia's 2001 claim submission.[148][148]
In June 2008 General
Vladimir Shamanov announced that Russia would increase the
operational radius of its
Northern Fleet submarines.[149]
and in July 2011, Defense Minister
Anatoly Serdyukov announced plans for two brigades to be stationed
in the Arctic.[150]
A construction program of
floating nuclear power plants will provide power to Russian Arctic
coastal cities and
gas rigs. A 21,500-ton barge with twin 35-megawatt reactors, the
Akademik Lomonosov, will go into operation in 2012.[151][152]
The
Prirazlomnoye field, an offshore oilfield in the
Pechora Sea that will include up to 40 wells, is currently under
construction and drilling is expected to start in early 2012. It will
have the world's first ice-resistant
oil platform and will also be the first offshore Arctic platform.[153][154]
In August 2011
Rosneft,
a Russian government-operated oil company, signed a deal with
ExxonMobil to receive oil assets in exchange for the joint
development of Russian Arctic resources by both companies.[155]
The agreement includes a $3.2 billion
hydrocarbon exploration of the Kara and Black seas,[156]
as well as joint development of ice-resistant drilling platforms and
other Arctic technologies.[157]
"The scale of the investment is very large. It’s scary to utter such
huge figures" said Putin on signing the deal.[155]
Environmental
policy
In 2004, President Putin signed the
Kyoto Protocol treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gases.[158]
However Russia did not face mandatory cuts, because the Kyoto Protocol
limits emissions to a percentage increase or decrease from 1990 levels
and Russia's greenhouse-gas emissions fell well below the 1990 baseline
due to a drop in economic output after the breakup of the Soviet Union.[159]
Putin personally supervises and/or promotes a number of protection
programmes for rare and endangered animals in Russia:
Religious and national policy
Orthodox Christianity,
Islam,
Buddhism and
Judaism,
defined by law as Russia's traditional religions and a part of Russia's
"historical heritage"[164]
enjoyed limited state support in the Putin era. The vast construction
and restoration of churches, started in 1990s, continued under Putin,
and the state allowed the teaching of religion in schools (parents are
provided with a choice for their children to learn the basics of one of
the traditional religions or
secular ethics). His approach to religious policy has been
characterised as one of support for religious freedoms, but also the
attempt to unify different religions under the authority of the state.[165]
In 2012, Putin was honored in
Bethlehem and a street was named after him.[166]
Putin meeting with religious leaders of Russia in 2001
Putin regularly attends the most important services of the
Russian Orthodox Church on the main
Orthodox Christian holidays. He established a good relationship with
Patriarchs of the Russian Church, the late
Alexy II of Moscow and the current
Kirill of Moscow. As President, he took an active personal part in
promoting the
Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, signed 17
May 2007 that restored relations between the Moscow-based
Russian Orthodox Church and the
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia after the 80-year schism.[167]
Putin and
United Russia enjoy high electoral support in the national
republics of Russia, in particular in the Muslim-majority republics
of
Povolzhye and the
North Caucasus.
Under Putin, the
Hasidic
FJCR became increasingly influential within the Jewish community,
partly due to the influence of Federation-supporting businessmen
mediated through their alliances with Putin, notably
Lev
Leviev and
Roman Abramovich.[168][168][169]
According to the
JTA, Putin is popular amongst the
Russian Jewish community, who see him as a force for stability.
Russia's chief rabbi,
Berel Lazar, said Putin "paid great attention to the needs of our
community and related to us with a deep respect."[170]
Sports development
On 4 July 2007 Putin addressed the delegates at the 119th
International Olympic Committee Session in
Guatemala City on behalf of the successful bid of
Sochi for
the
2014 Winter Olympics and the
2014 Winter Paralympics,[171]
the first
Winter Olympic Games in Russia. In 2008, the city of
Kazan won
the bid for the
2013 Summer Universiade, and on 2 December 2010 Russia won the right
to host the
2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and
2018 FIFA World Cup, also for the first time in Russia.
Other major tournaments which the country has been chosen to host
include the
2013 World Championships in Athletics in
Moscow
and the
2015 World Aquatics Championships in
Kazan
(both events never held in Russia so far), the
Russian Grand Prix (a new race of the
Formula One since 2014, to be held in
Sochi)
and the
2016 IIHF World Championship.
Military
development
The resumption of long-distance flights of Russia's
strategic bombers was followed by the announcement by Russian
Defense Minister
Anatoliy Serdyukov during his meeting with Putin on 5 December 2007,
that 11 ships, including the aircraft carrier
Kuznetsov, would take part in the first major navy sortie into
the Mediterranean since Soviet times.[172]
The sortie was to be backed up by 47 aircraft, including strategic
bombers.[173]
While from the early 2000s (decade) Russia started pumping more money
into its military and defence industry, it was only in 2008 that the
full-scale
Russian military reform began, aimed to modernize Russian Armed
Forces and made them significantly more effective. The reform was
largely carried by Defense Minister
Anatoly Serdyukov during Medvedev's Presidency, under supervision of
both Putin, as the Head of Government, and Medvedev, as the
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces.
Key elements of the reform included reducing the armed forces to a
strength of one million; reducing the number of officers; centralising
officer training from 65 military schools into 10 'systemic' military
training centres; creating a professional
NCO corps; reducing the size of the central command; introducing
more civilian logistics and auxiliary staff; elimination of
cadre-strength formations; reorganising the reserves; reorganising the
army into a brigade system; reorganising air forces into an air base
system instead of regiments.[174]
The number of Russia's
military districts was reduced to just 4. The term of draft service
was reduced from two years to one, which put an end to the old
harassment traditions in the army, since all conscripts became very
close by draft age. The gradual transition to the majority professional
army by the late 2010s was announced, and a large programme of supplying
the Armed Forces with new military equipment and ships was started. The
Russian Space Forces were replaced on 1 December 2011 with the
Russian Aerospace Defence Forces.
In spite of Putin's call for major investments in strategic nuclear
weapons, these will fall well below the
New
START limits due to the retirement of aging systems.[175]
Foreign policy
Relations with NATO and the West
Putin's Russia relationships with NATO and the U.S. have passed
several stages. When Putin first became President, the relations were
cautious. After the
9/11 attacks when Putin quickly supported U.S. in the
War on Terror, the opportunity for partnership appeared.[176]
However, the U.S. responded by further expansion of
NATO to
Russia's borders and by unilateral withdrawal from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.[176]
Since 2003, when Russia did not support the
Iraq
War and when Putin became ever more distant from the West in his
internal and external policies, the relations continued to deteriorate.
According to Russia scholar
Stephen F. Cohen, the narrative of the mainstream U.S. media,
following that of the
White House, became profoundly anti-Putin, full of accusations that
Putin had caused problems which actually stem from the 1990s, and
assertions that Putin was personally responsible for any murders of his
Russian political opponents, such as the journalist
Anna Politkovskaya and the supposed KGB defector in London,
Aleksandr Litvinenko.[176]
In an interview with
Michael Stürmer, Putin was quoted saying that there were three
questions which most concerned Russia and Eastern Europe; namely the
status of Kosovo, the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and American
plans to build missile defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic,
and suggested that all three were some way linked.[177]
In Putin's view, concessions on one of these questions on the Western
side might be met with concessions from Russia on another.[177]
In February 2007, at the annual
Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin openly criticized what
he called the United States' monopolistic dominance in global relations,
and "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations".
He said the result of it is that "no one feels safe! Because no one can
feel that
international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of
course such a policy stimulates an arms race."[178]
In this speech, which became known as
Munich Speech, Putin called for a "fair and democratic world order
that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but
for all".[178]
His remarks however were met with criticism by some delegates[179]
such as former NATO secretary
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who called his speech, "disappointing and not
helpful."[180]
Previously, in a January 2007 interview Putin said Russia is in favor of
a democratic
multipolar world and of strengthening the systems of
international law.[181]
The months following Putin's Munich speech[178]
were marked by tension and a surge in rhetoric on both sides of the
Atlantic. Both Russian and American officials, however, denied the idea
of a new
Cold
War.[182]
Putin publicly opposed plans for the
U.S. missile shield in Europe, and presented President
George W. Bush with a counterproposal on 7 June 2007 of modernising
and sharing the use of the Soviet-era
Gabala
radar station in
Azerbaijan rather than building a new system in the
Czech Republic[177]
Putin proposed it would not be necessary to place interceptor missiles
in Poland then, but interceptors could be placed in NATO member
Turkey
or Iraq.
Putin suggested also equal involvement of interested European countries
in the project.[183]
The proposal was declined. Russia suspended its participation in the
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe on 11 December 2007.[184]
Vladimir Putin strongly opposes the secession of
Kosovo
from Serbia.
He called any support for this act "immoral" and "illegal".[185]
He described Kosovo's declaration of independence a "terrible precedent"
that will come back to hit the West "in the face".[186]
He stated that the Kosovo precedent will de facto destroy the
whole system of international relations, developed over centuries.[187]
Putin's relations with former American President
George W. Bush, former
German
Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder, former
French President
Jacques Chirac, and
Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi are reported to be personally friendly. Putin's
"cooler" and "more business-like" relationship with Germany's new
Chancellor,
Angela Merkel is often attributed to Merkel's upbringing in the
former
DDR, where Putin was stationed when he was a KGB agent.[188]
Relations
with the U.K.
By mid-2000s (decade), the
relations between Russia and the United Kingdom deteriorated when
the United Kingdom granted political asylum to Putin's former patron,
oligarch
Boris Berezovsky in 2003.[189]
Berezovsky, located in London, often called for the overthrow of Putin[189]
and allegedly directed anti-Putin activities in Russia. The United
Kingdom also granted asylum to the Chechen rebel leader
Akhmed Zakayev and other people who fled from Russia.
In 2006 it became known that Britain spied on Russia using a fake
rock, which was located on a street and contained electronic equipment
that allowed British diplomats to receive and transmit information.[190]
The Russian security service
FSB linked the rock with allegations that British were making secret
payments to pro-democracy and human rights groups, and the same year
President Putin introduced a law which restricted
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from getting funding from
foreign governments. This resulted in many NGOs closing.[190]
In 2006, the Russian liberal opposition met the media reports on "spy
rock" with contempt, alleging that it was made-up by FSB,[191]
but in 2012
Jonathan Powell, ex-chief of staff of the U.K. Prime Minister
Tony Blair, confessed that the story with the rock was true.[190]
The end of 2006 brought very strained relations in the wake of the
death by
polonium poisoning[192][193]
of
Alexander Litvinenko in London. Litvinenko's friends
Andrei Nekrasov and
Alex Goldfarb claimed that Litvinenko had made a statement, in which
Putin was accused of directing the assassination.[194][195][196]
Critics have doubted that Litvinenko is the true author of the released
statement.[197][198][199]
When asked about the Litvinenko accusations, Putin said that a statement
released after death of its author "naturally deserves no comment", and
stated his belief it was being used for political purposes.[200]
In 2012, when Litvinenko's widow admitted that her husband had worked
for British intelligence services, Litvinenko's father said that the
Russian secret services had a right to kill traitors,[192]
and regretted "his participation in the smear campaign against Russia in
general and [current] Prime Minister Putin in particular".[192]
In 2007, the crisis in relations involved expelling four Russian
envoys
over Russia's refusal to extradite a former KGB bodyguard
Andrei Lugovoi to face charges on the alleged murder of Litvinenko,[189]
since the Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian
nationals to third countries. Mirroring the British actions, Russia
expelled UK diplomats and announced that it would suspend issuing visas
to UK officials and froze cooperation on counterterrorism in response to
Britain suspending contacts with their
Federal Security Service.[189]
Lugovoi subsequently became an MP in the Russian
Duma,
giving him immunity from prosecution within Russia. On 10 December 2007,
the British Ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, reacted by saying: "It
is a pity that a man wanted for murder gains political recognition. It
does Russia no good at all to have Lugovoy there in the parliament. It
continues the suspicion."[201]
The same day, Russia ordered the
British Council to halt work at its regional offices in the country.[202]
Relations with
India
India's Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with
Russia's president Vladimir Putin in November 2001.
During his first and second term in office, bilateral trade turnover
between India
and Russia
was modest and stood at US$ 3 billion, of which Indian exports to Russia
were valued at US$ 908 million. The major Indian exports to Russia are
pharmaceuticals; tea, coffee and spices; apparel and clothing; edible
preparations; and engineering goods. Main Indian imports from Russia are
iron and steel; fertilisers; non-ferrous metals; paper products; coal,
coke & briquettes; cereals; and rubber. Indo-Russian trade is expected
to reach US$10 billion by 2010. Putin wrote in an article in
the
Hindu, "The Declaration on Strategic Partnership between India and
Russia signed in October 2000 became a truly historic step".[203][204]
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also agreed with his counterpart by
stated in speech given during President Putin's 2012 visit to India,
"President Putin is a valued friend of India and the original architect
of the India-Russia strategic partnership".[205]
Both countries closely collaborate on matters of shared national
interest these include at the
UN, BRICS,
G20 and
SCO where India has
observer status and has been asked by Russia to become a full
member.[206]
Russia also strongly supports India receiving a permanent seat on the
United Nations Security Council. In addition, Russia has vocally
backed India joining the
NSG[207]
and
APEC.[208]
Moreover, it has also expressed interest in joining
SAARC with observer status in which India is a founding member.[209][210]
Russia currently is one of only two countries in the world (the other
being Japan)
that has a mechanism for annual ministerial-level defence reviews with
India.[211]
The Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission (IRIGC), which is one of
the largest and comprehensive governmental mechanisms that India has had
with any country internationally. Almost every department from the
Government of India attends it.[211]
Relations with China and SCO
Putin's Russia maintains strong and positive relations with other
BRIC countries.
The country has sought to strengthen ties especially with the
People's Republic of China by signing the
Treaty of Friendship as well as building the
Trans-Siberian oil pipeline geared toward growing Chinese energy
needs.[212]
The mutual-security cooperation of the two countries and their
central Asian neighbours is facilitated by the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which was founded in 2001 in
Shanghai by the leaders of China,
Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan.
The announcement made during the SCO summit that Russia resumes on a
permanent basis the long-distance patrol flights of its strategic
bombers (suspended in 1992)[213][214]
in the light of joint Russian-Chinese military exercises, first-ever in
history held on Russian territory,[215]
made some experts believe that Putin is inclined to set up an anti-NATO
bloc or the Asian version of
OPEC.[216]
When presented with the suggestion that "Western observers are already
likening the SCO to a military organisation that would stand in
opposition to NATO", Putin answered that "this kind of comparison is
inappropriate in both form and substance".[213]
Relations with
Iran
On 16 October 2007 Putin visited
Iran to
participate in the Second Caspian Summit in
Tehran,[217][218]
where he met with
Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[219]
Other participants were leaders of
Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, and
Turkmenistan.[220]
This is the first visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to Iran since
Joseph Stalin's participation in the
Tehran Conference in 1943.[221]
At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our (Caspian)
states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes
without any restrictions".[222]
Subsequently, under Medvedev's presidency,
Iran-Russia relations were uneven: Russia did not fulfill the
contract of selling to Iran the
S-300, one of the most potent
anti-aircraft missile systems currently existing. However, Russian
specialists completed the construction of Iran and the
Middle East's first civilian nuclear power facility, the
Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, and Russia has continuously opposed the
imposition of economic sanctions on Iran by the U.S. and the
EU, as well as warning against a military attack on Iran. Putin was
quoted as describing Iran as a "partner",[177]
though he expressed concerns over the
Iranian nuclear programme.[177]
Relations with Australasia, Latin America and others
Putin with
Fidel Castro in 2000, re-establishing close ties between
Russia and Cuba.
Putin and his successor Medvedev have enjoyed warm relations with
Hugo Chávez of
Venezuela. Much of this has been through the sale of military
equipment; since 2005, Venezuela has purchased more than $4 billion
worth of arms from Russia.[223]
In September 2008, Russia sent
Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela to carry out training flights.[224]
In November 2008, both countries held a joint naval exercise in the
Caribbean.[225]
Earlier in 2000, Putin had re-established stronger ties with
Fidel Castro's
Cuba.
In September 2007, Putin visited
Indonesia and in doing so became the first Russian leader to visit
the country in more than 50 years.[226]
In the same month, Putin also attended the
APEC meeting held in
Sydney,
Australia where he met with
Australian Prime Minister
John Howard and signed a uranium trade deal. This was the first
visit by a Russian president to Australia.
Libya
Putin meeting with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2008.
In April 2008, Putin visited
Libya
where he met the leader
Muammar Gaddafi, the country welcomed the idea of creating an
OPEC-like group of gas-exporting countries, Putin became first Russian
President who visited
Libya, he
remarked the visit as "We are satisfied about the way in which we
resolved this problem. I am absolutely convinced that the solution we
have found will help the Russian and Libyan economies."[227]
Putin condemned the
foreign military intervention of Libya, he called
UN resolution as "defective and flawed," and added "It allows
everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades.",[228]
During the whole event, Putin condemned other steps taken by
NATO.[229]
Upon the death of
Muammar Gaddafi, Putin called it as "planned murder" by
US, he asked "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was
killed," and "There was blood all over. Is that what they call a
democracy?"[230][231]
Syria
Dmitri Trenin reports in the New York Times that from 2000 to 2010
Russia sold around $1.5 billion worth of arms to
Syria,
making Damascus Moscow’s seventh-largest client.[232]
During the 2011-3
Syrian civil war, Russia threatened to veto any sanctions against
the Syrian government,[233]
and continued to supply arms to the regime.
Putin opposed any foreign intervention. On 1 June 1, 2012, in
Paris, he
rejected the statement of French
President
Francois Hollande who called on
Bashar Al-Assad to step down. Putin echoed the argument of the Assad
regime that anti-regime ’’militants’’ were responsible for much of the
bloodshed, rather than the shelling by Syrian forces and the civilian
killings attributed by survivors and Western governments toregime
supporters. He asked "But how many of peaceful people (sic) were killed
by so-called militants? Did you count? There are also hundreds of
victims." He also talked about previous NATO interventions and their
results, and asked "What is happening in Libya, in Iraq? Did they become
safer? Where are they heading? Nobody has an answer."[234]
Relations with post-Soviet states
A series of the so-called
color revolutions in the
post-Soviet states, namely the
Rose Revolution in
Georgia in 2003, the
Orange Revolution in
Ukraine
in 2004 and the
Tulip Revolution in
Kyrgyzstan in 2005, led to frictions in the relations of those
countries with Russia. In December 2004, Putin criticised the Rose and
Orange Revolution, according to him: "If you have permanent revolutions
you risk plunging the post-Soviet space into endless conflict".[235]
During the
protests following the 2011 Russian elections (in December 2011)
Putin named the Orange Revolution an infamous foreknowledge for Russia.[236]
Apart from a clash of nationalist rhetorics[clarification
needed] with the common historical legacies of the
Soviet Union and the
Russian Empire[citation
needed], a number of economic disputes erupted
between Russia and some neighbours, such as the
Russian import ban of Georgian wine. And in some cases, such as the
Russia–Ukraine gas disputes, the economic conflicts affected other
European countries, for example when a
January 2009 gas dispute with Ukraine led
state-controlled Russian company
Gazprom
to halt its deliveries of
natural gas to Ukraine,[237]
which left a number of European states, to which Ukraine transits
Russian gas, to have serious shortages of natural gas in January 2009.[237]
In an interview with the German historian
Michael Stürmer about the Russian shut-down of gas to Ukraine in
early 2005, Putin linked the shut-down to the Orange revolution, saying:
"This has a price [the Orange revolution]. In spite of so much
frustration we have stablizied the situation. In old days we concluded
agreements with Ukraine year after year, and then included transit fees.
The West Europeans had no idea that their energy security was a
cliffhanger. By now we have a five-year agreement for transit to the
E.U. This is an important step in the direction of European energy
security".[177]
The disputes typically arose because of inabilities of Ukraine to pay
higher prices for natural gas and pay debts in time. In 2009, the
Russia–Ukraine dispute was resolved by a long-term agreement on price
formula, agreed by Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin of Russia and
Prime Minister of Ukraine
Yulia Tymoshenko[237][238]
(later, when the rising global oil prices prompted the rising gas prizes[239]
the agreement turned very unfavourable for Ukraine; in October 2011
Tymoshenko was found guilty of
abuse of office when brokering the 2009 deal and was sentenced to
seven years in prison).[240]
The plans of
Georgia and
Ukraine to become members of
NATO have
caused some tensions between Russia and those states. In 2010, Ukraine
did abandon these plans.[241]
Putin allegedly declared at a NATO-Russia summit in 2008 that if Ukraine
joined NATO Russia could contend to annex the
Ukrainian East and
Crimea.[242]
In public Putin has stated that Russia has no intention of annexing any
country.[235]
In August 2008, Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili attempted to restore control over the breakaway
South Ossetia, claiming this action was in response to Ossetian
border attacks on Georgians and to alleged buildups of Russian
non-peacekeeping forces.
Russian peacekeepers stationed there came under attack during the
invasion and fought alongside the South Ossetians as Georgian troops
pushed into the province and seized most of the capital of
Tskhinvali. However, the Georgian military was soon defeated in the
resulting
2008 South Ossetia War after regular Russian forces entered South
Ossetia and then Georgia proper, and also opened a second front in the
other Georgian breakaway province of
Abkhazia together with Abkhazian forces.[243][244]
During this conflict, according to high level
French
diplomat
Jean-David Levitte, Putin intended to depose the
Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili and declared: "I am going to hang Saakashvili by
the balls".[245]
Putin blamed the 2008 war and the bad relations between Russia and
Georgia as "the result of the policy that the Georgian authorities
conducted back then and still attempt to conduct now"; he stated that
Georgia is a "brotherly nation that hopefully will finally understand
that Russia is not an enemy, but is a friend and the relations will be
restored"[246]
(one month before Georgian President Saakashvili had stated "Putin has a
problem with Georgian people, but not with Georgian government").[247]
Putin stated in 2009 Georgia could have kept Abkhazia and South Ossetia
"within its territory" if it had treated the residents of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia "with respect" (he claims they did "the opposite").[248]
The
President of Ukraine elected during the Orange Revolution,
Viktor Yushchenko, was
succeeded in 2010 by
Viktor Yanukovych, that led to improved relations with Russia.[249]
Russia was able to expand the lease for the base for its
Black Sea Fleet base in the Ukrainian city
Sevastopol in exchange for lower gas prices for Ukraine (the
2010 Ukrainian–Russian Naval Base for Natural Gas treaty).[250]
The
President of Kyrgyzstan
since 2009,
Almazbek Atambayev, wants to guide Kyrgyzstan towards the
Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia and has stated his
country has a "common future" with its neighbours and Russia.[251]
Eurasian policy
Main article:
Eurasian Union
Despite existing or past tensions between Russia and most of the
post-Soviet states, Putin has followed the policy of Eurasian
integration. The
Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia has already brought
partial economic unity between the three states, and the proposed
Eurasian Union is said to be a continuation of this
customs union. A number of other regional organizations also provide
the basis for further integration: the
Union State of Russia and Belarus, the
Eurasian Economic Community of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the
Collective Security Treaty Organisation, consisting of
Armenia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan, and the
Commonwealth of Independent States comprising most of the
post-Soviet countries.
On 18 November 2011, the presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia
signed an agreement, setting a target of establishing the Eurasian Union
by 2015.[252]
The agreement included the roadmap for the future integration and
established the Eurasian Commission (modelled on the
European Commission) and the Eurasian Economic Space, which started
work on 1 January 2012.[252][253]
Programmes
Long-term
strategies
The 2007 election campaign of the
United Russia party went under the slogan "Putin's Plan: Russia's
Victory". When asked on the "Putin's
Plan", Vladimir Putin said that his last five
Addresses to the Federal Assembly contained some key parts "devoted
to the state's medium-term development", and "if all these key ideas
were put together to build a coherent system, it can become the
country's development plan in the medium-term."[254]
Later the "Putin's Plan" was transformed into the
Strategy 2020, which set the key goals and target figures for
Russia's development until 2020. The "Strategy 2020" was first presented
by Putin on the Extended Meeting of the
State Council on 8 February 2008.[255]
It is the second long-term development strategy adopted by the Russian
Federation, following the
Strategy 2010, which had been made the basis for Russian government
programmes in June 2000 and was largely fulfilled by 2010.[256]
Programme articles
Putin has published articles in the Russian press on a number of
occasions, in particularly before and during his
2012 presidential campaign. Soon after the announcement that he
would run for another Presidency on 24 September 2011, in his article
called "New Integration Project for Eurasia – A Future That Is Being
Born Today"[257]
(Новый интеграционный проект для Евразии – будущее, которое рождается
сегодня[258]),
published by
Izvestiya on 3 October, he brought to attention the idea of the
Eurasian Union, composed of
Russia,
Kazakhstan,
Belarus
and possibly other
post-Soviet states[259][260]
(the concept was first proposed by the
President of Kazakhstan,
Nursultan Nazarbayev, during a 1994 speech at a Moscow university).[261]
This publication was soon followed by the presidents of Belarus,
Kazakhstan and Russia signing an agreement on 18 November 2011 which
established the Eurasian Commission (modeled on the
European Commission) from 1 January 2012 and set a target of
establishing the Eurasian Union (modeled on the
European Union) by 2015.[253]
In the course of the
2012 presidential campaign, in order to present his election
program, Putin published 7 articles in different Russian editions. In
those articles, he presented his vision of the problems which Russia
successfully solved in the last decade and the goals yet to be achieved.
The topics of the articles were as follows: the general overview, the
ethnicity issue, economic tasks, democracy and government efficiency,
social policy, military, foreign policy.[262]
Speeches
and catch phrases
Addresses to the Federal Assembly
During his terms in office Putin has made eight annual addresses to
the
Federal Assembly of Russia,[263]
speaking on the situation in Russia and on guidelines of the internal
and foreign policy of the State (as prescribed in Article 84 of the
Constitution[264]).
Speeches abroad
One of the most important and widely publicized speeches of Putin
made abroad was made on 10 February 2007 on the
Munich Conference on Security Policy, and hence became known as the
Munich speech. It was dubbed by the press to be "the turning point
of the Russian foreign policy", and western observers called it the most
tough speech from a leader of Russia since the time of the
Cold
War.[265]
The speech was also seen as been made by Putin to openly assert the new
(old) role of Russia in the international politics, the role close to
that of the
Soviet Union and the return to which role is seen as one of the
achievements of Putin's Presidency.[265]
In the Munich speech Putin called to uphold the principle "security
for everyone is security for all", criticized the policies of the
United States and
NATO,
condemned the
unipolar model of international relations as flawed and lacking
moral basis, condemned the
hypocrisy of countries trying to teach
democracy to Russia, condemned the domination of
hard power and enforcement by the U.S. of the Western norms and laws
to other countries bypassing the
international law and substituting the
United Nations by NATO or the
EU.[265]
Putin also called to stop the
militarization of space and questioned the plans to deploy
American missile defense in Europe as threatening strategic
nuclear balance and spurring new
arms
race (that's when the countries dubbed as
rogue states by the West are in fact lacking any rocket weapons
capable to threaten Europe or the U.S. and being unable to develop such
weapons any time soon).[265]
His speech was criticized by some attendant delegates at the conference,
including former NATO secretary
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who called it "disappointing and not helpful."[180]
On 4 July 2007 Putin made a full fluent English speech while
addressing delegates at the 119th
International Olympic Committee Session in
Guatemala City on behalf of the successful bid of
Sochi for
the
2014 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Olympic Games in Russia.[171]
Outdoor speeches
Notable Putin's outdoor speeches include his addresses during the
Victory Day
Moscow Military Parades one every 9 May in the years between
2000 and 2007. Under Putin's presidency and premiership, the old
Soviet tradition of 9 May Parades, which had been in decline in 1990s,
was gradually restored in full grandeur. Since the
2008 Moscow Victory Day Parade the
armoured fighting vehicles resumed regular taking part in the
Red
Square parades. Putin often used the Victory Day occasion to discuss
Russia's military development and Russia's security and foreign affairs.
For example, he said on 9 May 2007 that "threats are not becoming fewer
but are only transforming and changing their appearance. These new
threats, just as under the
Third Reich, show the same contempt for human life and the same
aspiration to establish an exclusive dictate over the world."[267]
During his
2012 presidential campaign Putin made a single outdoor public speech
at the 100,000-strong rally of his supporters in the
Luzhniki Stadium on 23 February, Russia's
Defender of the Fatherland Day.[103]
In the speech he called not to betray the
Motherland, but to love her, to unite around Russia and to work
together for the good, to overcome the existing problems.[268]
He said that the foreign interference into Russian affairs should not be
allowed, that Russia has its own free will. He compared the political
situation at the moment (when fears were spread in the Russian society
that
2011–2012 Russian protests could instigate a
color revolution directed from abroad) with the
First Fatherland War of 1812, reminding that its 200th anniversary
and the anniversary of the
Battle of Borodino would be celebrated in 2012.Putin cited
Lermontov's poem
Borodino and ended the speech with
Vyacheslav Molotov's famous
Great Patriotic War slogan "The Victory Shall Be Ours!" ("Победа
будет за нами!").[103][268]
On the post-election
celebration rally, while making an acceptance speech, Putin was for the
first time ever seen with tears in his eyes (later he explained that "it
was windy"). He said to a 110,000-strong audience: "I told you we would
win and we won!"[102][269]
Putinisms
Alluding to
Rudyard Kipling's python
Kaa,
Putin addresses the Russian non-systemic opposition, who,
according to him, work for foreign interests: Come to me,
Bandar-logs![270]
Putin has produced a large number of popular aphorisms and
catch-phrases, known as putinisms.[271]
Many of them were first made during his annual Q&A conferences, where
Putin answered questions from journalists and other people in the
studio, as well as from Russians throughout the country, who either
phoned in or spoke from studios and outdoor sites across Russia. Putin
is known for his often tough and sharp language.[271]
The examples of most popular putinisms include:[272]
- Мочить в сортире – To bump off in a toilet. One of
the earliest "putinisms", made in September 1999, when he promised
to destroy terrorists wherever they were found, including in
toilets.[272]
In 2010, Putin also promised to pluck out the remaining terrorists
from the bottom of a sewer (выковырять со дна канализации).[273]
- Она утонула – She sank. Putin's short answer to a
question from
Larry King in September 2000 asking what happened to the
Russian submarine K-141 Kursk.[272]
Many criticized Putin for the cynicism perceived in this answer.
This curt reply also spawned a new kind of joke based on giving one
short, self-evident answer (including a verb in past tense) to a
"What has happened with..?" question.[citation
needed]
- Пахал, как раб на галерах – literally, Ploughed like a
slave on a galley (the Russian verb пахать also has the
general meaning of "to do hard work"). This is how Putin described
his work as President of Russia from 2000 to 2008 during a Q&A
conference in February 2008.[271]
Not only did the phrase itself became popular, but a wrong reading
of it—как раб ("like a slave") in Russian sounds almost
identical to как краб ("like a
crab")—led
to the appearance of a popular Internet nickname for Putin, "Crabbe"
(Russian: Крабе), while
Dmitry Medvedev was (for some reason) similarly nicknamed Shmele
(Russian: Шмеле, a non-existent
vocative form of шмель, meaning "bumblebee").[274]
Putin during one of his annual Q&A conferences, indicating
with his pen.
- От мертвого осла уши – Ears of a dead
ass.
According to Putin, that was what
Latvia
would receive instead of the western
Pytalovsky District of Russia claimed by Latvia in a territorial
dispute stemming from the
Soviet border redrawing.[271]
On 27 March 2007 Russia and Latvia signed the treaty on state
border, in which Latvia renounced its territorial claims.[275]
- Шакалить у иностранных посольств –
Jackaling at foreign embassies. Putin's view of the Russian
"non-systemic opposition": characterising them as having minimal
support among the population, he says that they turn to asking for
money and support from foreign governments.[276]
- Как минимум государственный деятель должен иметь голову.
– At the very least, a state leader should have a head.
Putin's response to
Hillary Clinton's claim that Putin has no soul. He also
recommended that international relations be built without emotion
and instead on the basis of the fundamental interests of the states
involved.[272]
- Ручку верните – Return my pen. A phrase said by
Putin to the industrial oligarch
Oleg Deripaska, after Deripaska was forced by Putin to sign,
using Putin's pen, an agreement aimed at resolving a socio-economic
crisis in the
monograd of
Pikalyovo on 4 June 2009, which had escalated after the
different owners of the
aluminum oxide plant and connected enterprises in the town did
not pay their workers' salaries and were unable to negotiate the
terms on which the local industrial complex would work. Putin came
to the scene personally to conduct the negotiations.[277]
- Shearing a pig- On 25 June 2013, Vladimir Putin revealed
the surveillance whistleblower Edward
Snowden is indeed in a Moscow airport, ending a global guessing
game over the US fugitive's whereabouts. Putin lashed out at US
accusations that the Russia was harbouring a fugitive, saying "I'd
rather not deal with such questions, because anyway it's like
shearing a pig – lots of screams but little wool".
[278]
Public image
Ratings and polls
Putin's approval (blue) and disapproval (red) ratings during
his eight-year presidency.
According to public opinion surveys conducted by NGO Levada
Center, Putin's approval rating was 81% in June 2007, and the
highest of any leader in the world.[279]
His popularity rose from 31% in August 1999 to 80% in November 1999,
never dropping below 65% during his first Presidency.[280]
In January 2013, his approval rating fell to 62%, the lowest point since
2000 and a ten-point drop over two years.[281]
Observers see Putin's high approval ratings as a consequence of the
significant improvements in living standards and Russia's reassertion of
itself on the world scene that occurred during his tenure as President.[282][283][dead
link] One analysis attributed Putin's popularity,
in part, to state-owned or
state-controlled television.[284]
A joint poll by World Public Opinion in the US and Levada
Center [285]
in Russia around June–July 2006 stated that "neither the Russian nor the
American publics are convinced Russia is headed in an anti-democratic
direction" and "Russians generally support Putin's concentration of
political power and strongly support the re-nationalization of Russia's
oil and gas industry." Russians generally support the political course
of Putin and his team.[286]
A 2005 survey showed that three times as many Russians felt the country
was "more democratic" under Putin than it was during the Yeltsin or
Gorbachev years, and the same proportion thought human rights were
better under Putin than Yeltsin.[284]
Assessments
Putin was
Time magazine's
Person of the Year for 2007.[287]
In April 2008, Putin was put on the Time
100
most influential people in the world list.[288]
Vodka
Putinka. Some vodkas in Russia are named after
politicians.
On 4 December 2007, at
Harvard University, former Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev credited Putin with having "pulled Russia out of
chaos" and said he was "assured a place in history", despite Gorbachev's
claim that the news media have been suppressed and that election rules
run counter to the democratic ideals he has promoted".[289]
In December 2011, amid the
protests following the 2011 Russian elections Gorbachev criticized
Putin for a decision to seek the third term in the presidential
elections and advised Putin to leave politics. Putin's press spokesman
Dmitry Peskov commented on Gorbachev's expressions as following: "A
former leader, who was basically responsible for the dissolution of his
country, gives advice to the person, who could prevented Russia from a
similar destiny".[290]
Criticism of Putin has been spread especially over the
Runet.[291]
It is said that the Russian youth organisations finance a full "network"
of pro-government bloggers.[292]
In the U.S. embassy cables, published by
WikiLeaks in late 2010, Putin was called "alpha
dog" and compared with
Batman
(while
Dmitry Medvedev was compared with Batman's crime-fighting partner
Robin). American diplomats said Putin's Russia had become "a
corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir
Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound
together to create a "virtual
mafia state."[293][294]
Putin called it "slanderous".[295]
By western commentators and the Russian opposition, Putin has been
described as a
dictator.[8][296]
Putin biographer
Masha Gessen has stated that "Putin is a dictator," comparing him to
Alexander Lukashenko.[9][297]
Former UK Foreign Secretary
David Miliband has described Putin as a "ruthless dictator" whose
"days are numbered."[10]
U.S. Presidential candidate
Mitt Romney called Putin "a real threat to the stability and peace
of the world."[298]
In the fall of 2011, the anti-Putin opposition movement in Russia
became more visible, with street protests against allegedly falsified
parliamentary elections (in favor of Putin's party,
United Russia) cropping up across major Russian cities. Following
Putin's re-election in March 2012, the movement struggled to redefine
its new course of action.[299]
Brands
Putin's name and image are widely used in advertisement and product
branding.[300]
Among the Putin-branded products are
Putinka
vodka, the
PuTin brand of canned food, the Gorbusha Putina
caviar
and a collection of T-shirts with his image.[301]
Adventures and
image
Putin often supports an outdoor, sporting,
tough guy image in the media, demonstrating his physical
capabilities and taking part in unusual or dangerous acts, such as
extreme sports and interaction with wild animals.[302]
For example, in 2007, the tabloid
Komsomolskaya Pravda published a huge photograph of a
bare-chested Putin vacationing in the Siberian mountains under the
headline: "Be Like Putin."[303]
Such
photo ops are part of a public relations approach that, according to
Wired, "deliberately cultivates the
macho, take-charge
superhero image".[300]
Other notable examples of Putin's macho adventures include:[304]
Vladimir Putin in
Tuva, fishing in 2007. Putin often supports a
tough guy image in the media.
- Flying military jets. Putin flew a
Sukhoi Su-27 fighter over
Chechnya in 2000 and a
Tu-160 supersonic heavy bomber on 16 August 2005 at
MAKS Airshow.[304]
- Martial arts. Putin demonstrated his martial art skills
on a
tatami at the
Kodokan Institute in Tokyo on 5 September 2000 and has
subsequently made further demonstrations.[304]
- Adventures in the wild. On his trip to
Tuva in
August 2007, Putin was
riding horses,
rafting, fishing and swimming in a cold Siberian river (doing
all that mostly bare-chested).[303]
In August 2009 Putin repeated the experience.[305]
- Descending in a deepwater submersible. On 1 August 2009
Putin descended 1395 m to the bottom of
Lake Baikal, the
world's deepest lake, on a
MIR submersible accompanied by deepwater explorer
Anatoly Sagalevich (who had been among the team which had
reached the bottom at the
North Pole in the
Arktika 2007 expedition). From the bottom of Baikal Putin spoke
to journalists via
hydrophone.[306]
- Tranquilizing tigers. In 2008 Putin visited the
Ussuri national park, where he sedated an
Amur tiger with a tranquiliser gun and then helped measure its
teeth and fit it with a tracker.[303]
Claims were made later that the tiger was actually from the
Khabarovsk Zoo and that it died soon after the stunt, but the
suspected tiger named by the Khabarovsk Zoo workers[307]
was found in late 2009 in
Zelenogorsk,[308]
while the claims of a stunt were denied by the scientists who
organized the "safari".[309]
- Tranquilizing polar bears. In April 2010 Putin traveled
to
Franz Josef Land in the
Russian Arctic, where he tranquilized a
polar bear and attached a satellite tag to him.[310]
- Riding a motorbike. In July 2010 Putin appeared at a
Bikers festival in
Sevastopol riding a Harley-Davidson tricycle; the high council
of Russian bikers movements unanimously voted him into a
Hells Angel rank with the nickname of
Abaddon.[304][311]
Putin's associations with motorcycle gangs led to him being
accidentally placed on a blacklist of banned people in Finland.[312]
- Firefighting from the air. In August 2010, Russian TV
broadcasted video of Putin co-piloting a firefighting plane
Beriev Be-200 to dump water on a raging fire during the
2010 Russian wildfires.[300][304]
- Shooting darts at whales. In late August 2010 Putin shot
darts from a
crossbow at a
gray whale off
Kamchatka Peninsula coast as part of an eco-tracking effort,
while balancing on a
rubber boat in the sea.[304][313]
- Driving a race car. Putin tested a
Formula 1 car on 7 November 2010 in Saint Petersburg, reaching a
maximum speed of 240 km per hour.[304][314]
- Scuba diving. Putin took part in
scuba diving at the archaeological site of the
ancient Greek colony of
Phanagoria in the
Taman Bay on 11 August 2011.[315]
During the dive he "discovered" two
amphorae and emerged from the sea exclaiming to television
cameras "Treasure!" In October 2011, spokesman
Dmitry Peskov told media: "Putin did not find the amphorae on
the sea bed that had been lying there for thousands of years [...]
They were found during an [archaeological] expedition several weeks
or days beforehand. Of course they were then left there [for him to
find] or placed there. It is a completely normal thing to do."[316]
- Leading endangered cranes. Putin attempted to help
endangered Siberian cranes begin their migration routes by leading
them through the air in a motorized hang glider. Initially, the
birds did not follow him. Putin blamed this outcome on strong winds.[317]
Singing and
painting
On 11 December 2010, at a concert organized for a children's charity
in Saint Petersburg, Putin sang
Blueberry Hill accompanying himself on the piano. The concert
was attended by various Hollywood and European stars such as
Kevin Costner,
Sharon Stone,
Alain Delon, and
Gerard Depardieu.[318][319]
At the same event Putin played "С
чего начинается Родина?" (From What the Motherland Begins?,
a patriotic song from Putin's favourite spy movie "Щит
и меч", The Shield and the Sword).[319]
Putin also played or sang that song on a number of other occasions,[320]
such as a meeting with the
Russian spies deported from the U.S., including
Anna Chapman.[321]
Another melody which Putin is known to play on the piano is the
Anthem of Saint Petersburg, his native city.[322]
Putin's painting "Узор на заиндевевшем окне" (A Pattern on
a Hoarfrost-Encrusted Window), which he had painted during the
Christmas Fair on 26 December 2008, became the top lot at the charity
auction in Saint Petersburg and sold for 37 million rubles.[323]
The picture was made for a series of other paintings by famous Russians.
The painters were required to illustrate one of the letters of the
Russian alphabet with a subject connected to
Nikolay Gogol's novel
Christmas Eve (the 200th anniversary from Gogol's birth was
celebrated in 2008). Putin's picture depicted a hoarfrost pattern
(Russian: Узор, illustrating the Cyrillic letter
У)
on a window with
curtains
sewn with traditional
Ukrainian
ornaments.[323]
The creation of the painting coincided with the
2009 Russia-Ukraine gas dispute, which left a number of European
states without Russian gas and amid January frosts.[237]
In popular culture
A scene from the Superputin comics
A Russian movie called A Kiss not for Press was premiered in
2008 on DVD. The movie is said to be based on biography of Vladimir
Putin and his wife Lyudmila.[324]
Dobby, a
house elf from
Harry Potter film series, has been found to look like Putin,[325]
and so was also
Daniel Craig in his role of
James Bond (he was the first
blond
actor to play James Bond).[326]
There are a large number of songs about Putin.[327]
Some of the more popular include:
- Такого, как Путин – "[I Want] A Man Like Putin" by
Singing Together[328]
- Гороскоп (Путин, не ссы!) – "Horoscope (Putin, Don't
Piss!)" by
Uma2rman[329]
- ВВП – "VVP" by a
Tajik singer Tolibjon Kurbankhanov (Толибджон Курбанханов)[330][331]
- Our Madhouse is Voting for Putin by Working Faculty.
Putin also is a subject of
Russian jokes and
chastushki, such as the popular "[Before Putin] There Was No
Orgasm"
featured in the comedy film
The Day of Elections.[332]
There is a
meta-joke, that since the coming of Putin to power,
all the classic jokes about a smart yet rude boy called Вовочка
(Vovochka, diminutive from
Vladimir) have suddenly become
political jokes.
Putin features in the colouring book for children Vova and Dima
(presented on his 59th birthday),[333]
where he and
Dmitry Medvedev are drawn as good-behaving little boys, and in the
Superputin online comics series, where Putin and Medvedev are
portrayed first as
superheroes,[300]
and then as a
troll and an
orc in the
World of Warcraft.[334]
Vladimir Putin was portrayed by internet personality
Nice Peter in his Youtube series
Epic Rap Battles of History, in Season 2's finale episode,
"Rasputin vs. Stalin" (aired on April 22, 2013).[335]
Personal life
Family
On 28 July 1983 Putin married
Kaliningrad-born
Lyudmila Shkrebneva, at that time an undergraduate student of the
Spanish branch of the
Philology Department of the
Leningrad State University and a former
Aeroflot
flight attendant. They lived together in Germany from 1985 to 1990.
During this time, according to
BND archives, a German spy befriended Putina, who said that Putin
beat her and had love affairs.[336]
When the couple left Germany in 1990 it was rumoured that Putin left
behind an illegitimate child.[336]
Putina is now rarely seen with Putin[337][338]
and there have been rumours, according to the
Daily Mail and other newspapers, that the couple have separated.[337][338][339]
Putin has been linked by newspapers with other women, including gymnast
Alina Kabayeva[337][338]
and ex-spy
Anna Chapman.[339][340]
These rumours have been denied.[341][342]
Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, announced on June 6, 2013 that
their marriage is over, ending years of speculation about their
relationship. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no official
divorce had been drawn up yet, and he did not know when it would be, but
he attached little importance to the formality.[343]
Putin and his wife have two daughters, Mariya Putina (born 28 April
1985 in
Leningrad,
Soviet Union) and Yekaterina Putina (born 31 August 1986 in
Dresden,
East Germany). The daughters grew up in
East Germany[344]
and attended the
German School in Moscow until his appointment as Prime Minister.
After that they studied
international economics at the
Finance Academy in
Moscow,
although it was not officially reported due to security reasons.[citation
needed] According to the Daily Mail, their
photographs have never been published by the Russian media, and no
family portrait has ever been issued.[339]
According to an article in the newspaper De Pers Mariya is married to
the Dutchman Jorrit Faassen.[345][346]
Today they live in
Voorschoten, Netherlands.[347]
Personal wealth and residences
Figures released during the
legislative election of 2007 put Putin's wealth at approximately 3.7
million
rubles ($150,000) in bank accounts, a private 77.4-square-meter
(833 sq ft) apartment in Saint Petersburg, 260
shares of Bank Saint Petersburg (with a December 2007 market price
$5.36 per share[348])
and two 1960s-era
Volga M21 cars that he inherited from his father and does not
register for on-road use. In 2012 Putin reported an income of 3.6
million rubles ($113,000). This has led opponents, such as politician
Boris Nemtsov, to question how Putin can afford certain possessions,
such as his 11 luxury watches worth an estimated $700,000.[349]
Putin's purported 2006 income totalled 2 million rubles
(approximately $80,000).[351]
According to the data Putin did not make it into the 100 wealthiest
Duma
candidates of his own
United Russia party.[352]
Unconfirmed claims by some Russian opposition politicians and
journalists allege that Putin secretly possesses a large fortune (as
much as $40 billion) via successive ownership of stakes in a number of
Russian companies.[353][354]
Asked at a press conference on 14 February 2008 whether he was the
richest person in Europe, as some newspapers claimed; and if so, to
state the source of his wealth, Putin said "This is plain chatter, not
worthy discussion, plain bosh. They have picked this in their noses and
have smeared this across their pieces of paper. This is how I view
this."[355]
As President and then Prime-Minister, apart from the
Moscow Kremlin and the
White House, Putin has used numerous official residences throughout
the country. In August 2012 Nemtsov listed 20 villas and palaces, 9 of
which were built during Putin's 12 years in power. This compares to the
President of the United States' 2 official residences.[356]
Some of the residences include:
Gorki-9 near
Moscow,
Bocharov Ruchey in
Sochi,
Dolgiye Borody in
Novgorod Oblast,
Novo-Ogaryovo in
Moscow Oblast and Riviera in Sochi (the latter two were left for
Putin when he was Prime-Minister in 2008-2012, others were used by
Dmitry Medvedev at that period).[357]
Furthermore, a massive Italianate-style mansion costing an alleged USD 1
billion[350]
and dubbed "Putin's
Palace" is under construction near the Black Sea village of
Praskoveevka. The mansion, built on government land and sporting 3
helipads, a private road paid for from state funds and guarded by
officials wearing uniforms of the official Kremlin guard service, is
said to have been built for Putin's private use. In 2012
Sergei Kolesnikov, a former business associate of Putin's, told the
BBC's
Newsnight programme, that he had been ordered by deputy prime
minister,
Igor Sechin, to oversee the building of it.[358]
Languages
Apart from Russian, Putin speaks fluent German. His family used to
speak German at home as well.[359]
After becoming President he was reported to be taking English lessons
and could be seen conversing directly with Bush and native speakers of
English in informal situations, but he continues to use interpreters for
formal talks. Putin spoke English in public for the first time during
the state dinner in
Buckingham Palace in 2003 saying but a few phrases while delivering
his condolences to Queen
Elizabeth II on the death of her
mother.[360]
He made a full fluent English speech while addressing delegates at the
119th
International Olympic Committee Session in
Guatemala City on behalf of the successful bid of
Sochi for
the
2014 Winter Olympics.[171]
Religion
Putin's father was "a model communist, genuinely believing in its
ideals while trying to put them into practice in his own life". With
this dedication he became secretary of the Party cell in his workshop
and then after taking night classes joined the factory's Party bureau.[361]
Though his father was a "militant
atheist",[362]
Putin's mother "was a devoted Orthodox believer". Though she kept no
icons at
home, she attended church regularly, despite the government's
persecution of the
Russian Orthodox Church at that time. She ensured that Putin was
secretly christened as a baby and she regularly took him to services.
His father knew of this but turned a blind eye.[361]
According to Putin's own statements, his religious awakening followed
the serious car crash of his wife in 1993, and was deepened by a
life-threatening fire that burned down their dacha in August 1996.[362]
Right before an official visit to
Israel
his mother gave him his baptismal cross telling him to get it blessed "I
did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never
taken it off since."[361]
When asked whether he believes in God during his interview with
Time, he responded saying: "...There are things I believe, which
should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large
for everybody's consumption because that would look like
self-advertising or a political striptease."[363]
Martial arts
One of Putin's favorite sports is the
martial art of
judo. Putin
began training in
sambo (a martial art that originated in the
Soviet Union) at the age of 14, before switching to judo, which he
continues to practice today.[364]
Putin won competitions in his hometown of
Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), including the senior championships
of Leningrad in both sambo and judo. He is the President of the
Yawara Dojo, the same Saint Petersburg
dojo he
practiced at when young. Putin co-authored a book on his favorite sport,
published in Russian as Judo with Vladimir Putin and in English
under the title
Judo: History, Theory, Practice (2004).[365]
Though he is not the first world leader to practice judo, Putin is
the first leader to move forward into the advanced levels. Currently,
Putin holds a 6th
dan (red/white
belt)[366]
and is best known for his
Harai Goshi (sweeping hip throw). Putin earned
Master of Sports (Soviet and Russian sport title) in judo in 1975
and in sambo in 1973. At a state visit to Japan, Putin was invited to
the
Kodokan Institute, the judo headquarters, where he showed different
judo techniques to the students and Japanese officials.
Putin also holds a 6th dan black belt in
Kyokushin kaikan
karate.
He was presented the black belt in December 2009 by Japanese champion
Kyokushin Karate-Do master
Hatsuo Royama.[367]
In 2013, Putin re-introduced the
GTO physical fitness program to Russia[368]
with the support of
Steven Seagal.[369][370]
Other sports
Putin often is seen on outdoor activities with
Dmitry Medvedev, promoting sports and healthy way of life among
Russians: they were seen
alpine skiing in
Krasnaya Polyana,[371]
playing badminton, cycling and fishing.[372]
Putin also started to learn
ice skating and playing
ice
hockey after he promised to do so on a meeting with the
Russia men's national junior ice hockey team who had won the
2011 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.[373]
Putin also enjoys watching
football and supports
FC Zenit Saint Petersburg, the main team of his native city.
Pets
Putin owns a female black
Labrador Retriever named
Koni, given as a gift in 2000 by
General of the Army and Russia's
Minister of Emergency Situations
Sergey Shoigu. Koni is often seen at Putin's side and has been known
to accompany him into staff meetings and greet world leaders. In 2003 on
the day of the
Russian legislative election, Koni gave birth to eight pups, which
were later given as presents to Russian citizens, politicians and
foreign ambassadors.[375]
Koni gained additional fame in 2004 when Detskaya Literatura, the
largest Russian publisher of children's books, published a book entitled
Connie's Stories.[376]
In 2008 Koni became the first recipient of a
GLONASS-enabled
pet collar, highlighting the progress of the Russian
global navigation satellite system.[377]
In 2010
Bulgarian Prime Minister
Boyko Borisov gave Putin a
Karakachan dog who was then named
Buffy according to a suggestion by a five-year old boy from Moscow,
Dima Sokolov.[378]
Recognition
- In September 2006, France's president
Jacques Chirac awarded Vladimir Putin the Grand-Croix
(Grand Cross) of the
Légion d'honneur, the highest French decoration, to celebrate
his contribution to the friendship between the two countries. This
decoration is usually awarded to the heads of state considered very
close to France.[379]
- In 2007, Putin was named
Time magazine's
Person of the Year.
- On 12 February 2007
Saudi
King Abdullah awarded Putin the King Abdul Aziz Award, Saudi
Arabia's top civilian decoration.[380]
- On 10 September 2007
UAE President
Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan awarded Putin the
Order of Zayed, the UAE's top civil decoration.[381]
- In December 2007 Putin was named
Person of the Year by
Expert magazine, an influential and respected Russian business
weekly.[382]
- On 5 October 2008 the central street of
Grozny,
the capital of Russia's
Republic of Chechnya, was renamed from the Victory Avenue to the
Vladimir Putin Avenue, as ordered by the
Chechen President
Ramzan Kadyrov.[383]
- In February 2011
Kyrgyzstan parliament named a peak in
Tian Shan mountains
Vladimir Putin Peak.[384]
- On 15 November 2011 the
China International Peace Research Center awarded the
Confucius Peace Prize to Putin, citing as reason Putin's
opposition to
NATO's Libya bombing in 2011 while also paying tribute to his
decision to go to war in
Chechnya in 1999.[385]
According to the committee, Putin's "Iron hand and toughness
revealed in this war impressed the Russians a lot, and he was
regarded to be capable of bringing safety and stability to Russia".[386]
- In 2011, the
University of Belgrade awarded Putin an honorary doctorate.[387]
References and
notes
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^
Hale, Henry E.; Timothy J. Colton (8 September 2009).
"Russians and the Putin-Medvedev "Tandemocracy": A Survey-Based
Portrait of the 2007-08 Election Season". The National
Council for Eurasian and East European Research (Seattle,
WA: University of Washington).
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"Putin Hails Vote Victory, Opponents Cry Foul". En.rian.ru.
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"Elections in Russia: World Awaits for Putin to Reclaim the
Kremlin". The World Reporter. March 2012.
Retrieved 2012-03.
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Treisman, D.
"Is Russia's Experiment with Democracy Over?". UCLA
International Institute.
Retrieved 31 December 2007.
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Democracy Index 2011,
http://www.sida.se/Global/About%20Sida/Så%20arbetar%20vi/EIU_Democracy_Index_Dec2011.pdf
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Harding, Luke (1 December 2010).
"WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as 'mafia state'". The
Guardian (London).
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Stephen Holmes,
Fragments of a Defunct State,
London Review of Books
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a
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Andrew
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"Fears Vladimir Putin will turn Russia into outright
dictatorship".
The Daily Telegraph.
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a
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Stephen
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The Australian.
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a
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"David Miliband: Vladimir Putin Is A 'Ruthless Dictator'".
Huffington Post. 4 March 2012.
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McFaul, Michael; Stoner-Weiss,
Kathryn (2010). "Elections and Voters". In White, Stephen.
Developments in Russian Politics 7. New York: Palgrave
McMillan. p. 72.
ISBN 9780230224490.
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Krone-Schmalz, Gabriele (2008). "Der
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ISBN 978-3-7766-2525-7.
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Sergei; Tsyvinski, Aleh (2010). "Challenges Facing the Russian
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International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 12 May 2008
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2007. Retrieved 23 April 2008
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Rutland, Peter (2005). "Putin's
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White, Gitelman, Sakwa. Developments in Russian Politics
6. Duke University Press.
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a
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2010
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ПОСТУПЛЕНИЕ ИНОСТРАННЫХ ИНВЕСТИЦИЙ ПО ТИПАМ
Rosstat
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Biography at the Russia's Prime Minister web site[dead
link], in Russian
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a
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First Person. trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick.
PublicAffairs. 2000. p. 208.
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First Person An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's
President Vladimir Putin The New York Times, 2000
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Putin's Obscure Path From KGB to Kremlin Los Angeles Times,
March 19, 2000
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Portrait of the Young Vladimir Putin Newsweek and the Daily
Beast, February 20, 2012
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^ (Sakwa
2008, p. 2)
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"Prime Minister". Russia.rin.ru.
Retrieved 2011-09-24.
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theme:
Russian: «Принцип наиболее
благоприятствуемой нации»Выпускники
за 1975 год.[dead
link]
Saint Petersburg State University's website. ("The principle
of
most favored nation").
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^
Mehdi,
Ahmed (6 May 2012).
"Putin's Gazprom Problem".
Foreign Affairs.
Retrieved 11 May 2012.
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Владимир Путин. От Первого Лица.
Chapter 6
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a
b
c
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Pribylovsky, Vladimir (2010).
"Valdimir Putin". Власть-2010 (60 биографий) (in
Russian). Moscow: Panorama. pp. 132–139.
ISBN 978-5-94420-038-9.
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^ (Sakwa
2008, pp. 8–9)
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a
b
Hoffman, David (30 January 2000).
"Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB". The Washington
Post.
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^
"Putin set to visit Dresden, the place of his work as a KGB spy,
to tend relations with Germany". International Herald
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a
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Richard (2007).
Putin : Russia's Choice (2nd ed. ed.). Abingdon,
Oxon: Routledge. p. 10.
ISBN 9780415407656.
Retrieved 11 June 2012.
-
^
R. Sakwa Putin: Russia's Choice,
pp. 10-11
-
^
R. Sakwa Putin: Russia's Choice,
p. 11
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^
Kovalev,
Vladimir (23 July 2004).
"Uproar At Honor For Putin". The Saint Petersburg Times.
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Hoffman, David (30 January 2000).
"Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB". The Washington
Post.
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Putin's Name Surfaces in German Probe by Catherine Belton
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Walsh, Nick Paton (29 February
2004).
"The Man Who Wasn't There". The Observer.
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"Владимир Путин: от ассистента Собчака до и.о. премьера" (in
Russian). GAZETA.RU.
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"ПУТИН — КАНДИДАТ НАУК" (in Russian). zavtra.ru. 24 May
2000.
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a
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Maxim
Shishkin, Dmitry Butrin; Mikhail Shevchuk.
"The President as Candidate". Kommersant.
Retrieved 30 March 2010.
-
^
Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford
Gaddy: "The dissertation itself has something like 180 pages of
text....About 16 pages of text come straight out of King and
Cleland, with no footnotes, no quotation marks, and never in the
text are the names King and Cleland ever mentioned. Moreover,
this material that comes directly from King and Cleland is from
the very first sentence of chapter two, the chapter on strategic
planning, taken straight from the book. So there’s no original
introduction by Mr. Putin that then gets into this. So clearly
the reader assumes these are the thoughts, the ideas of the
author of the dissertation. Speaking as a professor, you can’t
do this; this is not the way you do it. This is plagiarism. If
you want to include this much of a work, which is probably too
much under any circumstances, you must put quotation marks
around it, you must acknowledge that these authors did all this
thinking. These are elementary steps that you must take. But it
wasn’t done. So I think this would classify as plagiarism at any
university around the world that’s adhering to international
standards, commonly accepted standards. It’s definitely
plagiarism. The next question of course is: was it intentional
plagiarism, or what was it all about? And that’s always the
question with plagiarism. In this case, I don’t think it was
really intentional in the sense that if you had wanted to hide
where the text came from you wouldn’t even list this work in the
bibliography."
-
^
The Half-Decay Products (in Russian) by Oleg Odnokolenko.
Itogi, #47(545), 2 January 2007.
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1999. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
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Yeltsin redraws political map BBC, 10 August 1999
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Richard Sakwa Putin: Russia's
choice, 2008. p. 20.
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Political groups and parties: Unity[dead
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УКАЗ от 31 декабря 1999 г. № 1763 О ГАРАНТИЯХ ПРЕЗИДЕНТУ
РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ, ПРЕКРАТИВШЕМУ ИСПОЛНЕНИЕ СВОИХ ПОЛНОМОЧИЙ,
И ЧЛЕНАМ ЕГО СЕМЬИ.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
-
^
Александр Колесниченко.
"«Развращение» первого лица. Госдума не решилась покуситься на
неприкосновенность экс-президента". Newizv.ru.
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Person of the Year 2007: A Tsar Is Born by Adi Ignatius,
(page 4). Retrieved 19 November 2009, Time
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RIAN
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Profile: Boris Berezovsky
BBC.
Retrieved 1 May 2008
-
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What a carve-up!
The Guardian. Retrieved 28 April 2008
-
^
Solovyev V. R. Putin. Guide For Those Who Cares / V.
Solovyev. – Moscow, "Eksmo", 2008. – 416 pp.
ISBN 978-5-699-23807-1. (Solovyev 2008). Page 36. (In
Russian: Владимир Соловьев. "Путин. Путеводитель для
неравнодушных." 2008.)
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^
Solovyev 2008, p. 39
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^
Fisher Investments on Emerging
Markets By Austin B. Fraser, (John
Wiley & Sons, 2009), page 92
-
^
Putin: Russia's Choice, By
Richard Sakwa, (Routledge, 2008) page 143-150
-
^
Playing Russian Roulette: Putin
in search of good governance, by Andre Mommen, in Good
Governance in the Era of Global Neoliberalism: Conflict and
Depolitisation in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and
Africa, By Jolle Demmers, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto,
Barbara Hogenboom (Routledge, 2004)
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BBC News, 12 August 2001
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"Duma approves old Soviet anthem". Edition.cnn.com.
2000-12-08. Retrieved
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National anthem of Russian Federation, StateSymbol.Ru
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Can Grozny be groovy?[dead
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Central Intelligence Agency
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Lynch, Dov (2005).
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International Affairs 81 (1), 141–161.
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(Bank of Finland). 24 June 2008.
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BBC
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How to Steal Legally
The Moscow Times, 15 February 2008 (issue 3843, page 8).
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Putin’s Gamble. Where Russia is headed by
Nikolas Gvosdev, www.nationalreview.com, 5 November 2003.
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Putin's Kremlin Asserting More Control of Economy. Yukos Case
Reflects Shift on Owning Assets, Notably in Energy by
Peter Baker,
The Washington Post, 9 July 2004.
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State-business relations and improvement of corporate governance
in Russia Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in
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"Putin's Russia failed to protect this brave woman - Joan Smith".
Comment.independent.co.uk. 2006-10-09.
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Anna Politkovskaya, Prominent Russian Journalist, Putin Critic
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Answers on questions asked during interview to
ARD TV channel (Germany),
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"The accused of murder of Anna Politkovskaya name possible
clients" (in
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Prime Minister". Fox News Channel. 12 September 2007.
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Election Preliminary Results for United Russia, 4 December
2007, Rbc.ru
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Izvestia
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official web site, 8 February 2008.
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Картина Путина стала самым дорогим лотом на аукционе в
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Фильм о любви человека, похожего на Путина
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(French)Video
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Bibliography
Academic works
- Burrett, Tina. Television and Presidential Power in
Putin's Russia (Routledge; 2010) 300 pages
- Kanet Roger E., ed. Russian Foreign Policy in the 21st
Century (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 295 pages; essays by
experts
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Sakwa, Richard (2008), Putin: Russia’s choice (2nd
ed.), Abingdon, Oxfordshire:
Routledge,
ISBN 0-203-93193-9
- Sakwa, Richard
(2008), Russian politics and society (4th ed.), Abingdon,
Oxfordshire and
Madison Avenue,
New York City:
Routledge,
ISBN 0-203-93125-4
Journalist works
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