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. Reportedly monitors loyalty of Soviet diplomats. Reportedly monitors loyalty of students and shadows foreigners. After Sobchak wins the election, Putin is tapped to work in city hall as chairman of the committee for international relations.
He resigns from the KGB. August 9, - Yeltsin appoints Putin as prime minister. December 31, - Yeltsin steps down amid scandal and Putin becomes acting president. He grants Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.
March 26, - Is elected president of Russia. May 7, - Putin is sworn in. Bush and the men hold a joint press conference. Bush tells reporters that during the two-hour meeting, he was able to get a sense of Putin's soul. May 24, - Putin and Bush sign the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, which requires each country to reduce its stockpiles of strategic nuclear warheads over the course of ten years.
March 15, - Is reelected after campaigning as an independent. May 7, - Putin is sworn in for his second term. April 27, - Becomes the first Russian leader to visit Israel. December 19, - Named Time magazine's Person of the Year. March 2, - Dmitry Medvedev is elected president of Russia. May 7, - Just two hours after his presidential swearing in, Medvedev names Putin as prime minister.
August - Russia engages in a military conflict with neighboring Georgia. September 24, - Medvedev calls on the ruling United Russia party to endorse Putin for president in Putin in turn suggests that Medvedev should take over the role of prime minister if the party wins parliamentary elections in December. Critics question the results amid complaints of voter fraud. May 7, - Putin is sworn in under tight security.
He also used the crude language of a street fighter when defending his military onslaught against separatist rebels in Chechnya, vowing to wipe them out "even in the toilet". 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. Will Putin rule Russia forever? Russia-Turkey tension: How Putin acts in a crisis. Syria poses challenges for Putin. Russia's leaders in workout session.
Patriotic fervour on the rise in Russia. Putin reveals secret Crimea plot. The fates of Putin's enemies. Russian presidency. Image source, Getty Images. And pity poor Angela Merkel, who has been assigned the task of calling Putin regularly — in part because the relationship with the exasperated Obama is, in the words of one senior U.
It seems like everyone, everywhere, has Vlad on the mind — and tell me that seemed a likely bet 10 years ago. Worse, the best days are almost certainly ahead.
The recently announced diplomatic deal — while probably good for all parties — may well help advance this Russian goal. When Ukraine starts to redraft its constitution, it is likely to embrace the looser, federalist system that Putin wanted all along.
This will give autonomy to the eastern regions, allowing them to drift closer to Moscow and further from Kiev. But a political victory in Ukraine might not even turn out to be the most striking victory this year for Vladpolitik — which is the blunt application of toughness in the face of an uncertain, divided ally.
Barack Obama long ago called for Assad to leave office. That now seems very unlikely. And Putin, who coldly calculated that Assad represented the best bulwark against Islamist extremism, has led the international defense of this war criminal.
Barring a major reversal on the ground, his resoluteness and that of Assad and his Iranian supporters will produce a victory over a fractious moderate opposition that America and the West have tepidly and inadequately supported. Admittedly, no good thing lasts forever. Sooner or later, Putin will likely see his historic run end. After all, as he himself keenly remembers, he may have won South Ossetia and Abkhazia in , but he sent the rest of Georgia headlong into the arms of the EU as a consequence.
This will almost certainly lead to new ties — not only to the EU but to a NATO that will finally begin to reassess and modernize its mission. Nothing awakes an alliance like an enemy. Europe will begin in earnest a search to reduce its dependency on Russian energy. And those photo ops at international summits are likely to be chilly for years to come.
Putin, like Obama, has never really been a hugger with a flair for the too-long embrace of predecessors like Yeltsin or Clinton. Indeed, this all seems likely to lead in an unhappy direction for Russia. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort.
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