Who is vladimir putin

For years, Putin has cultivated a populist image in the Russian media. Putin arrives to watch a military exercise in Russia's Leningrad region in March Russia hosted the Olympics that year. Putin controls the puck during an ice hockey game between Russian amateur players and ice hockey stars at a festival in Sochi, Russia, in May Putin sits in a bathyscape as it plunges into the Black Sea in August He went underwater to see the wreckage of an ancient merchant ship that was found earlier in the year.

Putin exercises at a Black Sea resort in Sochi in August They talked for more than two hours, discussing interference in US elections and ending with an agreement on curbing violence in Syria.

France defeated Croatia in the final. Birth date: October 7, Birth place: Leningrad now St. Petersburg , Russia. Birth name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Read More. Father: Vladimir Putin, a factory foreman. Mother: Maria Putin. Marriage: Lyudmila Shkrebneva Putin July 28, , divorced. Children: Yekaterina and Maria. Education: Leningrad State University, law, Religion: Orthodox Christian. Photos: The Vladimir Putin calendar. What calendar devoted to Vladimir Putin would be complete without a shirtless entry?

Here's one January image. Putin likes to project himself as a keen outdoorsman. March's photo feature a martial theme. In April, we get a more relaxed, even avuncular Russian leader. The picture for May is of a more formal Putin with heavy security.

June is all about the adorable puppy with the Russian President as animal lover. For July, it's back to the active, outdoorsy leader. December's image shows Putin enjoying the trappings of power. Other Facts. Enjoys working out and has a black belt in judo. Grew up in a communal apartment shared by three families. Served in the KGB as an intelligence officer before becoming involved in politics.

The city's downgrade from imperial capital to provincial city in the Soviet period, and the Bolshevik decision to rename it Leningrad, created a sense of resentment, a grudge against Moscow. Petersburg was supposed to be important. It had been built as the capital and the center of high culture for Peter the Great's new Russian Empire.

But its citizens were abruptly designated second rank. Putin was doubly or triply an outsider in the St. Petersburg Ozero group and the Soviet nomenklatura those who occupied state administrative positions. His family was never part of the intelligentsia.

In many respects he was an outsider even within the KGB. He was not a KGB "golden boy" like his contemporary Sergei Ivanov -- who later served as defense minister and deputy prime minister under Putin. The latter enjoyed early postings to Helsinki and London and always seemed to be on a fast track as he rose through the academies and ranks of the KGB.

In contrast, Vladimir Putin did not reach the upper echelons of the institution until he suddenly secured a political appointment to head the Federal Security Service FSB in Putin was an outsider even to Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika restructuring or transformation. He remained there until after the fall of the Berlin Wall in and returned to Soviet Leningrad early in After his tenure as a deputy mayor of St.

Petersburg, Putin was specifically brought into Moscow in summer as an outsider -- he was an operative on a mission to collect information on, monitor, and ultimately help the Kremlin rein in Russia's unruly oligarchs. In an interview she gave shortly after Putin was appointed prime minister in , Russian analyst Lilia Shevtsova described him as "an outsider who previously served in St. He has not had the time to develop the personal relationships and the network of allies within the bureaucracy of the security services that is necessary to establish firm control.

They concluded that "he [Putin] will be greatly limited in what he is able to do. The group of outsiders, who watched what the insiders did -- and probably begrudged them for their arrogance and incompetence -- defines the brotherhood Putin identifies with.

Most of his inner circle falls into this outsider category. This is not his fraternity. Apart from a very short period spent heading the FSB as a political appointee, Putin never served in the central apparatus of any of these entities and he never rose to the KGB's highest ranks during his official service. Putin was one of a generation of young recruits, a cohort of outsiders, brought into the KGB by chairman Yury Andropov in the s.

Andropov's career had been made in the CPSU, not the security services. He also served as Soviet ambassador to Budapest during the fateful Hungarian uprising of , an experience that in some respects mirrors Vladimir Putin's own time in Dresden as the German Democratic Republic fell apart. In the late s, he was closely associated with spearheading the KGB's efforts to crush political dissent and with creating the notorious network of psychiatric hospitals that prominent dissidents were often dispatched to "for treatment.

Andropov was also aware, however, that the entrenched and increasingly enfeebled Soviet system was in dire need of reform. In an effort to bring some new perspectives into the KGB and create an atmosphere for finding new ideas and dealing with the state's myriad problems, Andropov implemented a policy to expand the institution's recruitment of critical-minded young officers from different societal groups who could change the organization.

After Andropov's sudden death in February , tensions between this group of recruits, which was widely referred to as the Andropov levy or Andropov draft , and older KGB insiders increased. Vladimir Putin's recruitment to the KGB in as part of this general group compounded his sense of being an outsider.

Putin's assignment to Dresden put him even further outside mainstream structures. He was also outside the USSR -- during the crucial years of perestroika, to , Putin could only look in from afar. Those back home, including people who would later sit in Putin's inner circle, like erstwhile President Dmitry Medvedev, were caught up in the heat of the dramatic political, social and cultural events of this period. While Putin now uses the s as the touchstone for his presidency and spends an inordinate amount of channeling the debates and ideas of this decade, he has remarkably little to say about the s.

Putin probably also has a very different, much more uniformly negative, version of events of the late s than his peers in St. Petersburg or Moscow. As a foreigner in Dresden from to , Putin was also an outsider to the system and events in East Germany.

This must have been a strange position for him. It undoubtedly reinforced his view of his identity and role as the critical outsider learning from the mistakes of others. When Putin was posted to Dresden, the GDR was supposedly a Soviet ally, but the leadership of Eric Honecker sometimes acted as if its counterparts in Moscow were as much an enemy as the West.

There was no love lost between the inflexible East German leader and Mikhail Gorbachev, who used every occasion, including a public toast to Honecker in September , to remind his German counterpart of the need for political change.

The accepted story about Putin's KGB service is that Dresden -- which was the third-largest city in the GDR with a population of about , -- was an unimportant backwater. Putin's work there has also routinely been described as unimportant and even unsuccessful. There is no official version of what Putin was doing in Dresden, and he has not offered much personal detail.

Nor is there any concrete information about which directorate of the KGB Putin worked for. One suggestion is that he was in an operation, "Operation Luch " "beam" or "ray" , to steal technological secrets. Another says that while he was indeed part of Operation Luch, the mission was in fact an undercover operation to recruit top officials in the East German Communist Party and secret police Stasi.

On July 16, , Putin met with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, for the first formal talks between the two leaders. According to Russia, topics of the meeting included the ongoing war in Syria and "the removal of the concerns" about accusations of Russian attempts to influence the U.

The two leaders discussed the issue of the North Korean laborers in Russia, while Putin also offered support of his counterpart's denuclearization negotiations with the U. The topic of whether Putin aimed to extend his hold on power resurfaced following his state-of-the-nation speech in January , which included proposals for constitutional amendments that included transferring the power to select the prime minister and cabinet from the president to the Parliament. The entire cabinet, including Medvedev, promptly resigned, leading to the selection of Mikhail V.

Mishustin as the new prime minister. In , Putin met his future wife, Lyudmila, who was working as a flight attendant at the time. The couple married in and had two daughters: Maria, born in , and Yekaterina, born in In early June , after nearly 30 years of marriage, Russia's first couple announced that they were getting a divorce, providing little explanation for the decision, but assuring that they came to it mutually and amicably.

Vladimir Vladimirovich is immersed in his work, our children have grown and are living their own lives. An Orthodox Christian, Putin is said to attend church services on important dates and holidays on a regular basis and has had a long history of encouraging the construction and restoration of thousands of churches in the region.

He generally aims to unify all faiths under the government's authority and legally requires religious organizations to register with local officials for approval. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Vladimir Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state.

Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, and the first African American to serve in the office. First elected to the presidency in , he won a second term in Mikhail Gorbachev was the first president of the Soviet Union, serving from to He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his leadership role in ending the Cold War and promoting peaceful international relations.

Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of death and terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism. Previously, he served as the country's defense minister and head of armed forces. Robert Mugabe became prime minister of Zimbabwe in and served as the country's president from until his forced resignation in The first female prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher was a controversial figurehead of conservative ideology during her time in office.

Several Israeli officials and diplomats voiced disbelief, as the Japanese are known not to wear shoes at home or often even at work. Peter the Great was a Russian czar in the late 17th century, who is best known for his extensive reforms in an attempt to establish Russia as a great nation. The mainly Muslim North Caucasus republic was left devastated by heavy fighting in , in which thousands of civilians died.

Georgia was another Caucasus flashpoint for Mr Putin. In his forces routed the Georgian army and took over two breakaway regions - Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

And it showed Mr Putin's readiness to undermine pro-Western leaders in former Soviet states. Putin still in fashion 15 years on. Vladimir Putin's formative German years.

Church lends weight to Putin patriotism. Mr Putin's entourage is a fabulously wealthy elite and he himself is believed to have a huge fortune.

He keeps his family and financial affairs well shielded from publicity. The Panama Papers leaks in exposed a murky network of offshore companies owned by a longstanding friend of Mr Putin - concert cellist Sergei Roldugin.

Mr Putin and his wife of Lyudmila got divorced in after nearly 30 years of marriage. She described him as a workaholic. According to a Reuters news agency investigation, Mr Putin's younger daughter, Katerina, is thriving in academia , has a top administrative job at Moscow State University and performs in acrobatic rock 'n' roll competitions. The elder Putin daughter, Maria, is also an academic, specialising in endocrinology. Reuters found that several other powerful figures close to Mr Putin - often ex-KGB - also have successful children in lucrative management jobs.

He is passionate about ice hockey, like judo - and state TV has shown his skills on the ice. Mr Putin's brand of patriotism dominates Russia's media, skewing coverage in his favour, so the full extent of opposition is hard to gauge. Even in , as prime minister under President Dmitry Medvedev, he was clearly holding the levers of power. In his first two terms as president, Mr Putin was buoyed by healthy income from oil and gas - Russia's main exports.

Living standards for most Russians improved. But the price, in the opinion of many, was the erosion of Russia's fledgling democracy. Since the global financial crisis Mr Putin has struggled with an anaemic economy, hit by recession and more recently a plunge in the price of oil. Russia lost many foreign investors and billions of dollars in capital flight. Mr Putin's rule has been marked by conservative Russian nationalism. It has strong echoes of tsarist absolutism, encouraged by the Orthodox Church.

The Church supported a ban on groups spreading gay "propaganda" among teenagers. Soon after becoming president Mr Putin set about marginalising liberals, often replacing them with more hardline allies or neutrals seen as little more than yes-men.

Yeltsin favourites such as the oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky ended up as fugitives living in exile abroad. International concern about human rights in Russia grew with the jailing of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of the world's richest billionaires, and of anti-Putin activists from the punk group Pussy Riot.

Agents of the Russian state were accused of murdering him.