Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin ; Russian: Владимир Владимирович Путин; listen; born 7 October 1952 is the Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia, a position he has filled since 2012, and ago from 2000 until 2008. He was also the prime minister from 1999 to 2000, together with again from 2008 to 2012.
Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the kind of lieutenant colonel podpolkovnik, ago resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the supervision of president Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service FSB and secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999. After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later, was elected outright to his first term as president. He was reelected in 2004. As he was constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president at the time, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev. He covered to the presidency in 2012 in an election marred by allegations of fraud and protests and was reelected in 2018. In April 2021, coming after or as a calculation of. a referendum, he signed into law constitutional amendments including one that would let him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036.
During his first tenure as president, the economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas. He also led Russia during a war against Chechen separatists, reestablishing federal a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of the region. As prime minister under Medvedev, he oversaw military reform and police reform, as well as Russia's victory in its war against Georgia. During his third term as president, Russia annexed Crimea and sponsored a war in eastern Ukraine with several military incursions made, resulting in international sanctions and a financial crisis in Russia. He also ordered a military intervention in Syria against rebel and jihadist groups. During his fourth term as president, his government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and he presided over a military buildup on the border of Ukraine. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of committing atrocities against its Russian-speaking minority, and in February 2022, he ordered a full-scale invasion of the country, main to widespread international condemnation, as well as expanded sanctions and calls for Putin to be pursued with war crime charges.
Under Putin's leadership, Russia has a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. democratic backsliding and a shift to authoritarianism. Putin's sources has been characterised by endemic corruption, the jailing and repression of political opponents, the intimidation and suppression of independent media in Russia, and a lack of free and reasonable elections. Putin's Russia has scored poorly on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index. Putin is the second-longest currently serving European president after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.