Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

* 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg

Russian politician and Prime Minister of Russia since May 2008, a post which he held in 1999. He is also since 2008 Chairman of the United Russia party.

Spiridonovitch Vladimir Putin's father was called, he was a factory worker in a factory for wagon and a committed communist. He was drafted into military service in the Navy and fought in the Second World War. The mother, Maria Ivanovna, was said to be nurse. She was one of those Leningraders who had survived the German siege of the city from September 1941 to January 1944 (Leningrad blockade). Her second son died of diphtheria at this time.

Vladimir was the third child of the family. Two older, mid-1930s has come to the world his sons died in infancy. The education by the father was strict, while the left the Russian Orthodox faith, adhering mother lenient. The working-class family lived in a 20 square meters in Leningrad "communal flat", bathroom and kitchen, they had to share with the neighbors. As Hofkind beat the young Vladimir very often with their peers. The Communist Young Pioneer organization took him to do so at a later date. Putin was interested in early for martial arts and brought it in to the Leningrad city judo master. Putin now dominates various martial arts such as boxing, sambo and judo (winner of the "black belt"). Even as President in his Kremlin's official residence, he trained regularly in a dojo. Moreover, skiing is one of his sporting preferences.

Patriotic spy movies were the young Putin, an agent's activities appear attractive career option. As a student of ninth grade, he applied to his own specifications in the Leningrad KGB headquarters to take charge, but was advised to try it first with a law degree too.

Putin, who himself speaks German, has been married since 1983 with the German teacher, Lyudmila, and has two daughters: Mary (* 1985) and Yekaterina (born 1986 in Dresden). The daughters attended the German School in Moscow and studied at the State University of Saint Petersburg. Putin's mother died in 1998, his father on 2 August 1999, shortly before the appointment of Putin as Russian Prime Minister.

Since a life-threatening fire at his dacha in the early 1990s, Putin is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin repeatedly professes his Russian Orthodox faith. He attended the Orthodox Christmas at a church service in the 2006 New Jerusalem Monastery in Istra, near Moscow in part. On TV, it was shown how crossed Putin himself and lit a candle.

There are rumors that was born in Russia, according to which a Georgian woman named Vera Putina mother Vladimir Putin. Reports of an alleged Georgian violent stepfather Putin have been cited frequently in the Caucasus conflict in 2008, particularly in the Georgian media and placed under Putin, in this context personal revenge motives. The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph also took up the issue again at the beginning of December 2008. Secure information about his family background, it does not, however, and Putin has not confirmed these rumors.

Putin initially completed a law degree from the University of Leningrad. From 1975 to 1992 he was) KGB officer in the first main section (foreign espionage. Among his early duties was also the KGB suppressing dissident activities in his hometown. 1984 to 1985 he attended the KGB school in Moscow. Putin has worked since 1985 in East Germany, mainly in Dresden, in sub-function, where he deepened his knowledge of German. He advanced from the rank of captain to major. 1989 Putin had the rank of lieutenant colonel, indicating a post as deputy head of department in the KGB Residentur. According to the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic in 1990, he tried to set up a spy ring made up of former employees of the Ministry for State Security. But as the central figure chosen by Putin to quickly Constitution ran, flew to the ring.

Putin was recalled in January 1990 in the USSR. Because supernumerary staff in the Leningrad KGB, he went with the rank of an officer of the reserve as an assistant to the rector for international affairs at the local university.

His former professor, now the head of the Leningrad city council, Anatoly Sobchak hired Putin in the same year as a consultant. In 1991, the returnees as head of the municipal committee for external relations, was appointed. In 1992 he obtained a post as deputy mayor in the administration of the now St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. In the same year, the City Council was unsuccessful after rumors that Putin had committed irregularities in the issuing of export licenses.

1994 Putin was promoted to First Deputy Mayor, represented in this function Sobchak and organized locally in 1995 the Duma election campaign the Kremlin's party Our Home Russia ". In June 1996, Sobchak lost his re-election as mayor targeted against Anatolyevich Vladimir Yakovlev. Putin then stepped back from its municipal offices. He helped with the local campaign staff in the wake of Boris Yeltsin for the Russian presidential elections.

In August 1996 Putin was given the post of deputy head of Kremlin property management. In March 1997 he worked as Deputy Head of Office of the President Boris Yeltsin. In May 1998, Putin moved to Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration. An application filed by his 1997 doctoral dissertation was, according to allegations from the United States substantially from image copies and imitations of U.S. economists William King and David Cleland of the University of Pittsburgh, from which he also described in the introduction of the second part from the work of 16 pages US-Americans of 1978 had copied. For this there is as yet no official statement from Putin.

Of 25 July 1998 to August 1999 he was director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, from 26 March 1999 also secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.

Putin was Boris Yeltsin on 9 August 1999 was appointed prime minister by the Duma, and a week later confirmed. He responded to the bomb explosion in a shopping mall in central Moscow and a series of bomb attacks on residential buildings in Moscow, blamed Chechen terrorists with an iron fist. On 1 October 1999 Russian army units crossed the border to Chechen rebels fighting for part of the country, after a short time before Chechen fighters in Dagestan was invaded. The second Chechen war began. Putin launched a politician's military actions in Chechnya and he earned the good opinion poll ratings.

When Yeltsin on 31 Unexpectedly resigned his appointment in December 1999, Putin took over the constitutional duties of the President of the Russian Federation until the election of his successor. Yeltsin, Putin declared the preferred candidate for his succession.

On the same day, Putin granted Yeltsin immunity decree for his actions during the term of office as well as for future action and awarded him and his family have some privileges. Four months earlier, had become publicized investigation in Western newspapers of Western authorities to the Yeltsin family, because of suspicion of money laundering.

On 10 January 2000 Putin dismissed several possible suspect corruption in the Kremlin sizes and made reshuffles in the government. End of January, he announced an increase in military spending by 50 percent, probably in view of the situation in the North Caucasus.

The prime minister had become the people with its crackdowns in Chechnya high sympathy. On 26 Presidential elections were held in March 2000, Putin won in the first ballot with 52.9 percent of the vote. Under Boris Yeltsin, Putin is now the second post-Soviet president of Russia.

After years of scandals, erratic policy-making and a general feeling of national malaise, under President Yeltsin, many Russians, Putin appeared to choose a new start in their post-Soviet era. At the same time devoted himself to the inner circle around Yeltsin, hoping to keep their own positions of power and privilege, as he had chosen Putin and supported. A radical change in the administration because he stayed out even in the first year. Some members of the nomenklatura of the Jelzinzeit as chief of staff Alexander Voloshin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, maintained office and dignity. Other hand, Putin took a knowledgeable companion of his time in St. Petersburg and the Government could count on the support of his course by forces in the heads of security services (siloviki).

After his election, Putin initiated measures to restore the primacy of the Kremlin's domestic policy. 89 Föderativsubjekte Russia (republics, provinces, territories, as well as Moscow and Saint Petersburg), had been under Yeltsin, a previously unheard of autonomy. She made gradually - particularly in Chechnya - mature separatist aspirations of the regional governors, and had allowed all manner of self-importance. Putin now strove for, he said, to vertical of power, making the Föderativsubjekte) should (once again listen to the headquarters.

His second concern were the oligarchs, who had grown rich upper class. During the campaign they had to Putin's conviction by providing financial support and allow pro-Western dissident contributions unreasonably interfered with their associated media in Russian politics. First, it hit Vladimir Gusinsky, the media conglomerate, Media-MOST by state intervention, investigations for fraud, kremlkritischen takeover of the private broadcaster NTV by Gazprom Group on 14 semi - April 2001, as well as criminal and civil court rulings waned in a few months. Gusinsky himself preferred to go into exile in Spain. The super-rich Boris Berezovsky fled Russia, as inquiry has been initiated against him. The belongings of the ORT television channel with national coverage and critical pro-Western contributions came under state control.

Unlike his predecessor, President Putin often tied back into Russia's Soviet past. He stressed that the communist regime, despite his crimes was an important part of Russian history and had an important influence on the modern Russian society. As a result, some Soviet symbols returned to Russia, including the red military flag with the Soviet star and the Soviet national anthem - albeit with a different text.

Putin's party United Russia arrived in the parliamentary elections on 7 December 2003 and was a landslide victory with 37.1 percent of the vote strongest faction in the Duma. With this election Putin, the Kremlin administration of the One Russia, LDPR and Rodina was there, massively strengthened. The election is run properly, according to the OSCE, but the state apparatus and mass media have been used in the campaign to support the President's party.

Within the Kremlin watchers were operating under two groups. Recruited from a more nationalistic elements of military, security and intelligence circles. The other, called the family, consists of people who were close to former President Boris Yeltsin and the so-called oligarchs who profited from Yeltsin's tenure. The two parties were often disagree, so also in the arrest of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin tried to mediate between the two groups. As his chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, who is attributed to the family, in protest against the arrest of Khodorkovsky's threatened resignation, Putin accepted his resignation and replaced him with Dmitri Medvedev, the managing director of the state gas monopoly Gazprom.

On 24 February 2004, a month before the Duma elections, Putin dismissed Prime Minister Kasyanov, together with his cabinet and appointed Viktor Khristenko acting prime minister. A week later, on 1 March, convened by the President, however, Mikhail Fradkov in this office, which was confirmed by the Duma.

In the presidential elections on 14 March 2004 Putin, won with 71 percent of the vote and then went into a second term. Observers have noted no irregularities in the electoral process, however, criticized the strong inequality of the candidates as a result of many state-controlled media, which had advertised in advance for Putin.

On 13 September 2004 Putin put forward a plan that the (as yet directly elected) Governor of his own future, and proposed by the regional parliaments should be confirmed or rejected. On the same day, he supported a proposal by the Central Electoral Commission, the entire Duma seats be determined in future solely on the lists by proportional representation to. Both have now been resolved for the future, and so has brought a further increase in power for Putin.

So far half of the seats in electoral districts had been sent directly to Parliament, which led to some MPs, whose party at the five percent clause failed, made their way to the Duma and ensure there for diversity of opinion.

In November 2004 Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and concluded that the ratification process in Russia. Thus he paved the way for the entry into force of the Agreement in early 2005.

According to the Russian Constitution, the President may hold only two terms of four years. This means that had to move in after the current law in 2008, a new president in the Kremlin. This was supported by Putin, former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the presidential elections on 2 March 2008 has clearly won. Early 2008, Putin announced that he, in the case of Medvedev's election victory, the Office of the Prime Minister would assume that he reiterated after his election victory once again.

The United Russia party led by him, Putin arrived at the elections in December 2007 a two-thirds majority in the Duma. With this majority, the party may at any time discontinue the President of the Republic of possible impeachment. The Constitution is adhered to a formality, but in fact undermined.
Policy in the former Soviet Union

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Soviet Union lost the status of a superpower. In Yeltsin's tenure marked by confusion itself seemed to preserve the status of a great power is questionable.

Putin is anxious to get these same status of Russia as a great power or expand. So he intends to stabilize the Russian influence in former Soviet republics and other countries of the former Warsaw Pact and strengthened. Simultaneously, the growing Western, particularly American influence in the region should be contained or suppressed.

Thus, Putin openly supported the Ukrainian presidential election in November 2004 the favored candidate Viktor Yanukovych from him. Yanukovych advocated a closer integration of Ukraine to Russia instead of west. After an election marred by manipulation of both sides to Ukraine Yanukovych announced as the winner. In response to angry protests erupted a part of the Ukrainian population, which - supported by western countries and organizations invited by them year.The - "clean" elections without manipulation. Putin tried to secure the finality of the election victory to Yanukovych, as he congratulated him as the first head of state to the supposed victory. The official recognition of the election results by the Russian President should leave no doubt about the legitimacy of the vote. However, forcing the partially funded from the west on the street protests against the election process, a fresh polls, from which emerged as a Western-oriented, and the Western-backed Viktor Yushchenko in December 2004 as the winner. Even if Putin reiterated in a row to try to cooperate with Yushchenko, the defeat of kremlnahen candidate Yanukovych and the victory of the West-leaning Yushchenko also seen as Putin's foreign policy defeat.

When Vladimir Putin was expected in September 2004 to German-Russian consultations in Hamburg, he was an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg will be awarded. Dozens of professors, however, spoke out against it, and a nationwide discussion has been set in motion. At the same happened in a hostage drama in Beslan, North Caucasus, drew the now all attention. The consultations were subsequently canceled because of the appalling events in the North Caucasus. When the President's visit in Hamburg on 20 Caught up in December 2004, was a tribute not more talk.

On 25 April 2005 saw Putin for irritations in the west and from allies when he called in a nationally televised speech to the Duma, the fall of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." He later explained this observation served as a mere clarification of the event resulting from this political and social consequences and should not be understood as nostalgia.

The first Russian President Vladimir Putin campaigned on 6 July 2005 in an official speech in English via video for Moscow as the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games.

On 8 September 2005 was staged in Berlin in the presence of German and Russian leaders, an agreement signed to build a Baltic Sea gas pipeline. Signatories to the agreement, BASF AG and E. ON AG, on the Russian side, the company, Gazprom. The agreement establishes a partnership of three companies to build the North European Gas Pipeline, which will run from Russia's Baltic port of Vyborg (near St. Petersburg) to the German Baltic coast for a distance of 1200 kilometers across the Baltic Sea. Putin's close personal friend Gerhard Schröder, who was at the time of the announcement nor German Chancellor, will take over the supervisory board chairman of the consortium for the pipeline, which has triggered criticism from the opposition.

, Announced in March 2005 the approximation of the gas prices for Ukraine at the European level was evaluated by Western media at the time of erupted in December 2005 Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute widespread than Putin's reaction to the political development of the neighboring country. Later, Moscow, however, also ran in its allied countries such as Belarus price adjustments.

On 17 November 2005 Putin launched together with the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Samsun (Turkey), the Russian-Turkish Blue Stream gas pipeline.

Putin is building the world's claim to power in Russia continue, using the energy demand in Europe. On 21 October 2006 Putin assured the 25 EU leaders at their summit in Lahti, Finland, namely that Russia is open for an energy partnership with the European Union, however, declined from the West desired signature of the Energy Charter Treaty, after the Russian control over its pipeline system would have to cede to the Europeans.

2007 Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Italy during his visit to Pope Benedict XVI. in the Vatican. There, he discussed the position of the Church in Russia, and relations between the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church.
Press freedom under Putin

The substantial restriction of press freedom under Putin has been criticized for years by human rights organizations. As noted by the organization Reporters Without Borders in last year's Russia in 2006, worsened working conditions for Russian journalists, in 2005 alarming. Violence was the "most serious threat to press freedom."

According to the organization that is the Kremlin-controlled Russian television by close groups and heavily censored. Some independent newspapers were forced in 2005 by heavy fines for the task. Through the award of public contracts for newspaper ads that would be the war in Chechnya themed, effectively blackmailed. The work of American journalists, who worked for the ABC, was not renewed after the station broadcast an interview with Chechen rebel leader Shamil Bazayev. In Saratov, the journalist Edward Abrosimow libel to seven months forced labor had been convicted. In August, the deputy editor of the weekly newspaper for defamation Odinzowskaja Nedelja to four years of hard labor had been convicted. He was released after protests of international human rights organizations. Overall, the Russian press laws very far below European standards.

The already under Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin observed violence against journalists could not be contained even under Putin. During his presidency so far a total of 13 journalists have been murdered. In none of the cases there was a conviction of the perpetrators, according to a report of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

It was not until the murder of dissident journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October 2006 by unknown raised the issue of press freedom in Russia in the headlines in Western media. The Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber called on Putin to ensure press freedom in Russia. In an open letter, published in the weekly Die Zeit to Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Russian journalist Yelena Tregubova asked how the murder may have been a coincidence "if Putin on the first day of his presidency on track to destroy the free press and opposition (and) consequently all the independent opposition television station in Russia liquidated (was): NTV, TV-6, TWS. "

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