Vladimir Putin, the judoka who worked for the KGB

*Paromita Das

Between 2013 and 2016, Russia’s president was named the world’s most powerful person four times. He has used his position to expand his country’s influence around the world.

The FBI is investigating whether Trump’s campaign had a link with high-ranking Russian officials during the election.

Trump and Putin have both disputed the charges, while Facebook has confirmed that 126 million Americans have seen political advertisements paid by Russian entities.

Putin, who was born in Saint Petersburg in 1952, served as Prime Minister for one year under Yeltsin’s presidency before ascending to the highest office in 2000.

Putin’s international clout originates partly from Europe’s reliance on Russian oil and gas, with state-owned Gazprom being one of the EU’s largest suppliers.

 

Early in one’s career

Putin studied law at Leningrad State University, where he was tutored by Anatoly Sobchak, who went on to become one of the perestroika period’s major reform politicians. Putin worked with the KGB (Committee for State Security) for 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer, including six years in Dresden, East Germany. In 1990, he retired from active KGB service as a lieutenant colonel and returned to Russia to become protector of Leningrad State University, where he was in charge of the institution’s external contacts. Soon after, Putin became an adviser to Sobchak, St. Petersburg’s first democratically elected mayor. He rapidly gained Sobchak’s trust and gained a reputation for his ability to get things done; by 1994, he had ascended to the position of first deputy mayor.

Putin relocated to Moscow in 1996 and joined the presidential staff as a deputy to Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin’s chief administrator. Putin became close to fellow Leningrader Anatoly Chubais and rose through the administrative ranks. Putin was appointed director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the domestic successor to the KGB) by President Boris Yeltsin in July 1998, and he soon became secretary of the important Security Council. Putin was named prime minister in 1999 by Yeltsin, who was looking for an heir to take his place.

 

Despite his relative obscurity, Putin’s popularity skyrocketed when he started a well-organized military operation in Chechnya against secessionist militants. Weary of Yeltsin’s erratic behaviour, the Russian people admired Putin’s calmness and decisiveness under duress.

Putin’s backing for a new electoral alliance, Unity, assured its success in the legislative elections in December.

 

Russia’s first and second terms as president

 

Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on December 31, 1999, and Putin was named acting president. The austere and restrained Putin easily won the March 2000 elections, with almost 53 percent of the vote, promising to rebuild a weakened Russia. As president, he worked to eliminate corruption and establish a tightly controlled market economy.

 

Putin soon reclaimed control of Russia’s 89 regions and republics, splitting them into seven new federal districts, each led by a president-appointed delegate. He also revoked regional governors’ privilege to sit on the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament.

Putin took steps to limit the authority of Russia’s unpopular financiers and media tycoons, known as “oligarchs,” by closing many media outlets and initiating criminal procedures against a number of key players. In Chechnya, he faced a difficult situation, especially from rebels who launched terrorist attacks in Moscow and guerilla attacks on Russian troops from the region’s mountains; in 2002; Putin declared the military campaign over, although losses remained high.

Putin was outraged by US President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001. In reaction to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, he offered Russia’s assistance and collaboration in the US-led battle against terrorists and their allies, offering the use of Russian airspace for humanitarian deliveries and assistance in search-and-rescue operations.

 

Nonetheless, in 2002–03, Putin supported German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac in opposing US and British proposals to use force to depose Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.

 

Putin was easily reelected in March 2004, presiding over an economy that had recovered from a severe recession in the 1990s. In the December 2007 parliamentary elections, Putin’s United Russia party secured an overwhelming majority of seats. Despite international observers and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation questioning the legitimacy of the elections, the results confirmed Putin’s control. When a constitutional clause forced Putin to resign in 2008, he appointed Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.

 

Putin’s appointment as Prime Minister

 

Putin announced his acceptance of the job of chairman of the United Russia party shortly after Medvedev won the March 2008 presidential election by a landslide. Within hours of entering office on May 7, 2008, Medvedev selected Putin as Prime Minister, confirming widespread expectations. The appointment was ratified the next day by Russia’s parliament. Although Medvedev became more assertive as his term wenton, Putin remained the Kremlin’s dominant figure.

While some predicted that Medvedev might run for a second term, he declared in September 2011 that he and Putin would trade positions awaiting a United Russia victory at the polls. Widespread violations in the December 2011 parliamentary elections sparked a surge of popular protests, and Putin faced a surprisingly powerful opposition movement in the presidential contest. Putin, on the other hand, was elected to a third term as Russia’s president on March 4, 2012. Putin resigned as chairman of United Russia before his inauguration, ceding control of the party to Medvedev. On May 7, 2012, he was inaugurated as president, and one of his first acts as president was to appoint Medvedev as prime minister.

 

Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term

 

Putin’s first year as president was marked by a largely successful attempt to quell the protest movement. Opposition leaders were imprisoned, and nongovernmental organizations that received international funds were branded as “foreign agents.” Tensions with the US erupted in June 2013, when former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden sought sanctuary in Russia after revealing the existence of several classified NSA programs. Snowden was allowed to stay in Russia on the condition that he refrain from “causing harm to our American partners,” as Putin put it. Following chemical weapons incidents near Damascus in August 2013, the United States advanced the case for military action in Syria’s civil war.

Putin urged prudence in an editorial published in The New York Times, and US and Russian officials negotiated a plan in which Syria’s chemical weapons supply would be eliminated.

 

In December 2013, Putin marked the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the post-Soviet constitution by ordering the release of over 25,000 people from Russian prisons. Separately, Putin pardoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of the Yukos oil firm who had been imprisoned for more than a decade on accusations that many outside Russia felt were politically motivated.

 

The crisis in Ukraine and Syria’s intervention

 

When Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government was toppled in February 2014 following months of continuous protests, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Putin requested parliamentary authorisation to send soldiers to Ukraine to protect Russian interests, despite his refusal to acknowledge the interim administration in Kyiv as legitimate. By early March 2014, Russian forces and pro-Russian paramilitaries had effectively taken control of Crimea, a Ukrainian autonomous republic populated primarily by ethnic Russians.

 

Residents of Crimea opted to join Russia in a popular referendum on March 16, and Western nations have imposed a slew of travel bans and asset freezes on members of Putin’s inner circle.

On March 18, Putin signed a contract admitting Crimea into the Russian Federation, claiming that the peninsula had always been a part of Russia. The United States and the European Union imposed economic penalties on more of Putin’s political cronies in the days that followed. Following ratification of the pact by both houses of the Russian parliament, Putin signed legislation on March 21 that legalized Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

 

In April 2014, gangs of unidentified gunmen armed with Russian weapons seized government buildings across southeastern Ukraine, igniting an armed war with the Kyiv administration. Putin referred to the region as Novorossiya (“New Russia”), recalling imperial claims, and, despite all indications of direct Russian involvement in the insurgency, Putin resolutely denied it.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, carrying 298 people, crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and overwhelming evidence suggested that it was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-controlled territory. Western countries responded by strengthening sanctions, which, along with falling oil prices, threw the Russian economy into a tailspin. When Russian and Ukrainian leaders gathered for cease-fire talks in Minsk, Belarus, on September 5, NATO believed that more than 1,000 Russian troops were actively fighting inside Ukraine. The cease-fire slowed but did not stop the fighting, and pro-Russian insurgents spent the next several months pushing back Ukrainian government forces.

 

Putin met with other world leaders in Minsk on February 12, 2015, to approve a 12-point peace plan aimed at ending the bloodshed in Ukraine. Although combat had subsided for a time, it resumed in the spring, and by September 2015, the United Nations (UN) reported that 8,000 people had been murdered and 1.5 million had been displaced as a result of the conflict. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 28, 2015, Putin articulated his vision of Russia as a world power capable of expanding its influence overseas, while portraying the United States and NATO as dangers to global security.

 

Russia became an active participant in the Syrian Civil War two days later, when Russian aircraft attacked sites near the towns of Homs and Hama. Although Russian defense officials declared that the air strikes were intended to target Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant troops and equipment, the actual emphasis of the operations appeared to be on opponents of Syrian President and Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.

 

In the West, criticism and actions are being silenced.

 

On February 27, 2015, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated outside the Kremlin, only days after speaking out against Russian engagement in Ukraine. Nemtsov was the most recent Putin critic to be slain or killed under questionable circumstances. A British public investigation officially accused Putin of the 2006 death of former Federal Security Service (FSB; the successor to the KGB) officer Alexander Litvinenko in January 2016. Litvinenko, who had spoken out against Russian government ties to organized crime both before and after defecting to the UK, was poisoned with polonium-210 at a London hotel bar while having tea.

Britain ordered the extradition of the two men accused of carrying out the assassination. but both denied involvement, and one of them, Andrey Lugovoy, had subsequently been elected to the Duma and had parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

 

Aleksey Navalny, an opposition activist who rose to prominence as a leader of the 2011 protest movement, was frequently imprisoned on politically motivated accusations, according to supporters. Navalny finished second in the Moscow mayoral election in 2013, but his Progress Party was barred from running in consecutive elections due to procedural issues. Voter turnout in the September 2016 legislative election was 47.8 percent, the lowest since the Soviet Union’s demise.

 

Voter disinterest was linked to Putin’s consistent implementation of so-called “managed democracy,” a system in which core democratic structures and procedures were maintained but election outcomes were largely predetermined. Putin’s United Russia party declared victory, although election observers found numerous irregularities, including ballot stuffing and multiple voting. Because of its registration status, Navalny’s party was unable to field any candidates, and Nemtsov’s PARNAS received less than 1% of the vote.

 

By 2016, Putin’s participation in Syria had changed the balance of power, and evidence surfaced that Russia was engaged in a broad hybrid warfare strategy aimed at undermining the strength and legitimacy of Western democracies.

 

Many of the attacks blurred the border between cyberwarfare and cybercrime, while others evoked Cold War-era direct Soviet interventionism. Russian fighter jets routinely violated NATO airspace in the Baltic, while a pair of sophisticated cyberattacks on Ukraine’s power grid knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. Over a two-month period, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that his country had been subjected to more than 6,000 cyber attacks, with nearly every sector of Ukrainian society being targeted. Ukrainian investigators, according to Poroshenko, have linked cyberwar activity to Russian security services.

 

Authorities in Montenegro, where the pro-Western government was preparing for NATO entrance, nearly averted a conspiracy to assassinate Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo DJukanovic and install a pro-Russian government.

Prosecutors in Montenegro identified a plot involving nationalist Serbs, pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, and, reportedly, a couple of Russian intelligence agents who organized the coup.

 

A series of high-profile hacking assaults attacked the Democratic Party and its presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, in the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Computer security experts linked these intrusions to Russian intelligence services, and Wikileaks published thousands of private e-mails in July 2016. Within days, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States launched an investigation into Russian efforts to influence the presidential election. It was later disclosed that this inquiry was also looking into possible links between those efforts and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign.

Despite these assertions, Trump has consistently denied that Putin was attempting to impact the election in his favour.

Following Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016, renewed focus was placed on cyberattacks and suspected collaboration between Trump’s campaign staff and Russia. US intelligence agencies assessed that Putin directed a multifaceted operation to influence the election and damage trust in American democratic systems. US President Barack Obama slapped economic sanctions on Russian intelligence services and dismissed hundreds of suspected Russian operatives. but President-elect Donald Trump has continued to deny US intelligence agencies’ findings. Trump assumed office in January 2017, and the United States Congress launched new investigations into the nature and scope of Russian intervention in the presidential election.

 

Putin, for his part, denied the existence of any strategy to sway foreign elections. However, in May 2017, another cyber attack was blamed on Fancy Bear, the Russian government-linked outfit that had hacked the Democratic Party. The second round of France’s presidential election got underway, with the finalists being centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right National Front contender Marine Le Pen. Le Pen had already received financial backing from a bank with ties to the Kremlin, and she vowed to work to lift the sanctions imposed following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

A vast collection of internal correspondence called “MacronLeaks” leaked on the Internet only hours before a media blackout on campaign-related news coverage went into force. This attempt was futile, as Macron received nearly twice as many votes as Le Pen and was elected President of France.

 

Putin’s international activities appeared to pay off handsomely at home, as his popular popularity rating continuously maintained around 80% despite Russia’s lagging economy and widespread government corruption. Low oil prices and Western sanctions exacerbated an already bleak financial outlook, as international investors were hesitant to put their money at risk in a country where personal ties to Putin were valued more than the rule of law.

Even after emerging from a seven-quarter slump, Russia’s salaries and consumer spending remained unchanged in 2017. These and other domestic concerns appeared to do nothing to tarnish Putin’s image; among those expressing concern about such issues in opinion polls, the most frequently assigned blame was to Putin’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.

 

Fourth term as President

 

The Salisbury Novichok attack and Trump’s ties

As the March 2018 presidential election approached, it appeared like Putin would easily win a fourth presidential term. Navalny, the opposition’s face, was forbidden from competing, while the Communist candidate, Pavel Grudinin, was constantly chastised by the state-run media.

Two weeks before the election, Putin was the subject of a huge international incident when Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer convicted of spying for Britain, but released as part of a prisoner swap, was discovered unconscious with his daughter in Salisbury, England. The pair were allegedly subjected to a “novichok,” a sophisticated nerve toxin manufactured by the Soviets, according to investigators. British officials accused Putin of ordering the strike, and British Prime Minister Theresa May dismissed almost two dozen Russian intelligence personnel working under diplomatic cover in the country.

When Russians voted to the polls on March 18, 2018, the diplomatic conflict had not subsided. The date coincided with the fourth anniversary of Russia’s violent annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea, an act that boosted Putin’s domestic popularity. Putin claimed an overwhelming majority of the vote, as expected, in an election regarded as replete with irregularities by the independent monitoring agency Golos. Putin had hoped for a bigger turnout than in his 2012 election triumph, and ballot tampering was found in several areas. Putin’s campaign called the outcome a “amazing win.”

 

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with Trump in Helsinki, Finland, coming off the success of Russia’s well-received hosting of the World Cup football championship. In 2017, the two met at the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Hamburg, Germany, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam, but this was their first formal one-on-one meeting. It came at the conclusion of Trump’s tour to Europe, during which he strained relations with the US’ traditional European allies.

After Putin kept Trump waiting by coming late, the two spoke for two hours alone (with just translators present) and then briefly in the presence of advisers. In a subsequent press conference, Putin rejected any Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump then struck shockwaves when, in answer to a reporter’s inquiry, he said he trusted Putin’s denial more than the conclusions of his own intelligence organizations, which had only days before resulted in the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for election tampering. Furthermore, when given the opportunity to condemn Russia’s transgressions, Trump instead blamed the US for its fragile relationship with Russia.

 

New START

 

However, with a new administration in Washington led by President Barack Obama, agreement between the two parties appeared conceivable by early 2009. Negotiations continued through START I’s formal expiration in December, and Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to work out a new treaty by December that would build on START I’s verification arrangements and limit strategic weapons on each side to 500–1,000 warheads and 1,500–1,675 delivery systems.

The targets set by the so-called New START are approximately 30% lower than the levels set by SORT in 2002. The new restrictions must be met seven years after being ratified by the Senate (in December 2010) and the Duma (which voted to ratify in January 2011). START-I verification procedures have been reduced to eliminate redundant monitoring methods, such as eliminating permanent monitoring at Votkinsk and limiting telemetry access. The new START, on the other hand, calls for increased on-site inspections.