Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin
President of Russia
Born	7 October 1952 Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Qualification	Law Degree
Profession	Politician
Awards / Honours
Vladimir Putin has received many Russian state awards and several foreign honours, mainly recognizing his political leadership and diplomatic relations.
Personal details
Organization's	United Russia
Spouse	Lyudmila Putina (div.)
Connect	Kremlin, Moscow, Russia
Websites	en.kremlin.ru
Citation/Legacy
Putin’s legacy includes strong centralized leadership and efforts to boost Russia’s global influence, but also significant criticism over reduced political freedoms and international conflicts.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. He has been described as the de facto leader of Russia since 2000.

Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He resigned in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. In 1996, he moved to Moscow to join the administration of President Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and then as secretary of the Security Council of Russia before being appointed prime minister in August 1999. Following Yeltsin's resignation, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later in May 2000, was elected to his first term as president. He was reelected in 2004. Due to constitutional limitations on two consecutive presidential terms, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev. He returned to the presidency in 2012, following an election marked by allegations of fraud and protests, and was reelected in 2018.

During Putin's initial presidential tenure, the Russian economy grew on average by seven percent per year as a result of economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas. Additionally, Putin led Russia in a conflict against Chechen separatists, re-establishing federal control over the region. While serving as prime minister under Medvedev, he oversaw the Russian invasion and occupation of Georgia, alongside enacting military and police reforms. In his third presidential term, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea as well as supported a war in eastern Ukraine through several military incursions, resulting in international sanctions, which, together with a drop in oil prices on the international markets, led to the financial crisis in Russia. Additionally, he ordered a military intervention in Syria to support his ally, president of Syria Bashar al-Assad, during the Syrian civil war. In February 2022, during his fourth presidential term, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which prompted international condemnation and led to expanded sanctions. In September 2022, he announced a partial mobilization and forcibly annexed four Ukrainian oblasts into Russia. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes related to his alleged criminal responsibility for illegal child abductions during the war. In April 2021, after a referendum, he signed constitutional amendments into law that included one allowing him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036. In March 2024, he was reelected to another term.

Under Putin's rule, the Russian political system has been transformed into an authoritarian dictatorship with a personality cult. His rule has been marked by endemic corruption and widespread human rights violations, including the imprisonment and suppression of political opponents, intimidation and censorship of independent media in Russia, and a lack of free and fair elections. Russia has consistently received very low scores on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, The Economist Democracy Index, Freedom House's Freedom in the World index, and the Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index.

Early life and education

Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), the youngest of three children of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin and Maria Ivanovna Putina (née Shelomova). His grandfather, Spiridon Putin, was a personal cook to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Putin's birth was preceded by the deaths of two brothers: Albert, born in the 1930s, died in infancy, and Viktor, born in 1940, died of diphtheria and starvation in 1942 during the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany's forces in World War II.

Putin's mother was a factory worker, and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. During the early stage of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin's maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of the Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Education

On 1 September 1960, Putin started at School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, near his home. He was one of a few in his class of about 45 pupils who were not yet members of the Young Pioneer (Komsomol) organization. At the age of 12, he began to practice sambo and judo. In his free time, he enjoyed reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin. Putin attended Saint Petersburg High School 281 with a German language immersion program. He is fluent in German and has given speeches and interviews in that language.

Putin studied law at the Leningrad State University named after Andrei Zhdanov (now Saint Petersburg State University) in 1970 and graduated in 1975. His thesis was on "The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law." While there, he was required to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); he remained a member until it ceased to exist in 1991. Putin also met Anatoly Sobchak, an assistant professor who taught business law, who later became the co-author of the Russian constitution. Putin was influential in Sobchak's career in Saint Petersburg, and Sobchak was influential in Putin's career in Moscow.

In 1997, Putin received a degree in economics (Candidate of Economic Sciences) at the Saint Petersburg Mining University for a thesis on energy dependencies and their instrumentalisation in foreign policy. His supervisor was Vladimir Litvinenko, who in 2000 and again in 2004 managed his presidential election campaigns in St Petersburg. Igor Danchenko and Clifford Gaddy consider Putin to be a plagiarist according to Western standards. One book from which he copied entire paragraphs is the Russian-language edition of King and Cleland's Strategic Planning and Policy (1978). Balzer wrote on the Putin thesis and Russian energy policy and concludes along with Olcott that "The primacy of the Russian state in the country's energy sector is non-negotiable", and cites the insistence on majority Russian ownership of any joint-venture, particularly since BASF signed the Gazprom Nord Stream-Yuzhno-Russkoye deal in 2004 with a 49–51 structure, as opposed to the older 50–50 split of BP's TNK-BP project.

Intelligence career

Main article: Intelligence career of Vladimir Putin

In 1975, Putin joined the KGB and trained at the 401st KGB School in Okhta, Leningrad. After training, he worked in the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence) before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where he monitored foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad. In September 1984, Putin was sent to Moscow for further training at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute.

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From 1985 to 1990, he served in Dresden, East Germany, using a cover identity as a translator. While posted in Dresden, Putin served as one of the KGB's liaison officers to the Stasi secret police and was reportedly promoted to lieutenant colonel. According to the official Kremlin presidential site, the East German communist regime commended Putin with a bronze medal for "faithful service to the National People's Army." Putin has publicly conveyed delight over his activities in Dresden, once recounting his confrontations with East Germany's anti-communist protestors of 1989 who attempted to occupy the city's Stasi buildings.

"Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB", Russian-American Masha Gessen wrote in their 2012 biography of Putin. His work was also downplayed by former Stasi spy chief Markus Wolf and Putin's former KGB colleague Vladimir Usoltsev. Journalist Catherine Belton wrote in 2020 that this downplaying was actually a cover for Putin's involvement in KGB coordination and support for the terrorist Red Army Faction, whose members frequently hid in East Germany with the support of the Stasi. Dresden was preferred as a "marginal" town with only a small presence of Western intelligence services. According to an anonymous source who claimed to be a former RAF member, at one of these meetings in Dresden, the militants presented Putin with a list of weapons that were later delivered to the RAF in West Germany. Klaus Zuchold, who claimed to be recruited by Putin, said that Putin handled a neo-Nazi, Rainer Sonntag, and attempted to recruit the author of a study on poisons. Putin reportedly met Germans to be recruited for wireless communications affairs, together with an interpreter. He was involved in wireless communications technologies in South-East Asia due to trips of German engineers, recruited by him, there and to the West. However, a 2023 investigation by Der Spiegel reported that the anonymous source had never been an RAF member and is "considered a notorious fabulist" with "several previous convictions, including for making false statements."

According to Putin's official biography, during the fall of the Berlin Wall that began on 9 November 1989, he saved the files of the Soviet Cultural Center (House of Friendship) and of the KGB villa in Dresden for the official authorities of the would-be united Germany to prevent demonstrators, including KGB and Stasi agents, from obtaining and destroying them. He then supposedly burnt only the KGB files, in a few hours, but saved the archives of the Soviet Cultural Center for the German authorities. Nothing is written about the selection criteria during this burning; for example, regarding Stasi files or files of other agencies of the German Democratic Republic or of the USSR. He explained that many documents were left in Germany only because the furnace burst; however, many documents of the KGB villa were sent to Moscow.

After the collapse of the Communist East German government, Putin was to resign from active KGB service because of suspicions aroused regarding his loyalty during demonstrations in Dresden and earlier, although the KGB and the Soviet Army still operated in eastern Germany. He returned to Leningrad in early 1990 as a member of the "active reserves", where he worked for about three months with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector Yuriy Molchanov, while working on his doctoral dissertation.

There, he looked for new KGB recruits, watched the student body, and renewed his friendship with his former professor, Anatoly Sobchak, who was soon afterward elected the Mayor of Leningrad. Putin said that he resigned with the rank of lieutenant colonel on 20 August 1991, on the second day of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin stated: "As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on", although he said that the choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with "the organs".

Political career

Main article: Political career of Vladimir Putin

Further information: Russia under Vladimir Putin, Putinism, List of speeches given by Vladimir Putin, and Politics of Russia

Putin's political rise began in the Saint Petersburg administration (1990–1996), where in May 1990, he was appointed as an advisor on international affairs to Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Shortly thereafter, in June 1991, he became the head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office, overseeing the promotion of international ties, foreign investment, and the registration of business ventures. Though his tenure was marred by investigations from the city legislative council concerning discrepancies in asset valuation and the export of metals, Putin retained his position until 1996. During the mid-1990s, he expanded his responsibilities in Saint Petersburg, serving as first deputy head of the city administration and leading the local branch of the pro-government political party Our Home Is Russia, as well as participating in advisory roles with regional newspapers.

Transitioning to the national scene in 1996, Putin was called to Moscow following the electoral defeat of Sobchak, where he assumed the role of Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department. In this capacity, he was responsible for managing the transfer of former Soviet assets to the Russian Federation. His career in Moscow advanced rapidly with his appointment in 1997 as deputy chief of the Presidential Staff and later as chief of the Main Control Directorate of the same department. A pivotal moment came in 1998 when President Boris Yeltsin appointed him director of the FSB, Russia's primary intelligence and security agency. In this role, Putin concentrated on reorganising and strengthening the agency after years of perceived decline, a period that would prove formative for his later approach to governance.

In August 1999, Putin's profile increased substantially when he was named one of the three First Deputy Prime Ministers, and later the acting Prime Minister following the dismissal of Sergei Stepashin's cabinet. Endorsed by Yeltsin as his preferred successor, Putin quickly capitalized on his law-and-order reputation and rose in popularity, winning the presidential election in March 2000 and being inaugurated on 7 May 2000. Throughout his subsequent terms, alternately serving as president and Prime Minister, Putin has overseen extensive reforms aimed at consolidating state power, restructuring federal relations, and curbing the influence of oligarchs. His tenure has been punctuated by significant foreign policy actions, including the controversial annexation of Crimea in 2014, military interventions in Syria, and ongoing involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

2024–present: Fifth presidential term

Putin won the 2024 Russian presidential election with 88% of the vote. International observers did not consider the election to be free or fair, with Putin having increased political repressions after launching his full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. The elections were also held in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. There were reports of irregularities, including ballot stuffing and coercion, with statistical analysis suggesting unprecedented levels of fraud in the 2024 elections. In March 2024, the Crocus City Hall attack took place, causing the deaths of 145 people and injuring 551 more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on Russian soil since the Beslan school siege in 2004.

In May 2024, Putin was inaugurated as president of Russia for the fifth time. According to analysts, replacing Sergei Shoigu with Andrey Belousov as defense minister signals that Putin wanted to transform the economy into a war economy and is "preparing for many more years of war". Four Russian sources told Reuters that Putin was ready to end the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that would recognize Russia's war gains and freeze the war on the then front lines, as Putin wanted to avoid unpopular steps such as further mobilization and increased war spending.

In September 2024, Putin warned the West that if attacked with conventional weapons Russia would consider a nuclear retaliation, in an apparent deviation from the no first use doctrine. Putin went on to threaten nuclear powers that if they supported another country's attack on Russia, then they would be considered participants in such an aggression. Russia and the United States are the world's biggest nuclear powers, holding 88% of the world's nuclear weapons. Putin has made implicit nuclear threats since the outbreak of war against Ukraine. Experts say Putin's announcement was aimed at dissuading the US, UK and France from allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles such as the Storm Shadow and ATACMS in strikes against Russia.

In May 2025, Putin approved Alexander Novak's coal industry bailout plan.

On 15 May 2025, Russian and Ukrainian delegations held direct talks in Istanbul for the first time since early 2022. As a condition for peace, Putin called on Ukraine to abandon four partially occupied Ukrainian regions that Russia has annexed but not conquered: a territorial concession that Ukraine has repeatedly rejected. He also listed other demands that critics say would lead to the end of Ukraine as a sovereign and independent state. Putin rejected calls for an unconditional ceasefire and escalated attacks on Ukraine.

On 22 June 2025, Putin condemned Trump's strikes on Iranian nuclear sites as an "unprovoked act of aggression", although at the same time he authorized Russian strikes against Ukraine. As of July 2025, Russian casualties in the war with Ukraine were estimated at 1 million.

In October 2025, Putin said that the United States government's sanctions against Russia's largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, would not force him to end the war in Ukraine. In exchange for agreeing to a peace deal, Putin demanded that Ukraine cede territory in the Donbas to Russia.

Domestic policies

Main article: Domestic policy of Vladimir Putin

See also: Freedom of assembly in Russia, Media freedom in Russia, and Internet censorship in Russia

Further information: 2011–2013 Russian protests, 2017–2018 Russian protests, and Bolotnaya Square case

Putin's domestic policies, particularly early in his first presidency, were aimed at creating a vertical power structure. On 13 May 2000, he issued a decree organizing the 89 federal subjects of Russia into seven administrative federal districts and appointed a presidential envoy responsible for each of those districts (whose official title is Plenipotentiary Representative).

According to Stephen White, under the presidency of Putin, Russia made it clear that it had no intention of establishing a "second edition" of the American or British political system, but rather a system that was closer to Russia's own traditions and circumstances. Some commentators have described Putin's administration as a "sovereign democracy". According to the proponents of that description (primarily Vladislav Surkov), the government's actions and policies ought above all to enjoy popular support within Russia itself and not be directed or influenced from outside the country.

The practice of the system is characterized by Swedish economist Anders Åslund as manual management, commenting: "After Putin resumed the presidency in 2012, his rule is best described as 'manual management' as the Russians like to put it. Putin does whatever he wants, with little consideration for the consequences, with one important caveat. During the Russian financial crash of August 1998, Putin learned that financial crises are politically destabilizing and must be avoided at all costs. Therefore, he cares about financial stability"

The period after 2012 saw mass protests against the falsification of elections, censorship, and the toughening of free assembly laws. In July 2000, according to a law proposed by Putin and approved by the Federal Assembly of Russia, Putin gained the right to dismiss the heads of the 89 federal subjects. In 2004, the direct election of those heads (usually called "governors") by popular vote was replaced with a system whereby they would be nominated by the president and approved or disapproved by regional legislatures.

This was seen by Putin as a necessary move to stop separatist tendencies and get rid of those governors who were connected with organized crime. This and other government actions effected under Putin's presidency have been criticized by many independent Russian media outlets and Western commentators as anti-democratic.

During his first term in office, Putin opposed some of the Yeltsin-era business oligarchs, as well as his political opponents, resulting in the exile or imprisonment of such people as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky; other oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich and Arkady Rotenberg are friends and allies with Putin. Putin succeeded in codifying land law and tax law and promulgated new codes on labour, administrative, criminal, commercial, and civil procedural law. Under Medvedev's presidency, Putin's government implemented some key reforms in the area of state security, the Russian police reform and the Russian military reform.

In 1999, Putin described communism as "a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization". By 1999, Zyuganov was the evident frontrunner for the first round of the pending 2000 presidential election. However, by the autumn of 1999, Vladimir Putin had overtaken Zyuganov as leading candidate in the polls. During Putin's rule, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has changed from radical, civil war-threatening to a component of the “systemic opposition” with criticism rarely more than rhetorical.

Economic, industrial, and energy policies

See also: Economy of Russia, Energy policy of Russia, Great Recession in Russia, Russian financial crisis (2014–2016), and Economic impact of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Sergey Guriyev, when talking about Putin's economic policy, divided it into four distinct periods: the "reform" years of his first term (1999–2003); the "statist" years of his second term (2004—the first half of 2008); the world economic crisis and recovery (the second half of 2008–2013); and the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia's growing isolation from the global economy, and stagnation (2014–present).

In 2000, Putin launched the "Programme for the Socio-Economic Development of the Russian Federation for the Period 2000–2010", but it was abandoned in 2008 when it was 30% complete. Fueled by the 2000s commodities boom including record-high oil prices, under the Putin administration from 2000 to 2016, an increase in income in USD terms was 4.5 times. During Putin's first eight years in office, industry grew substantially, as did production, construction, real incomes, credit, and the middle class. A fund for oil revenue allowed Russia to repay the Soviet Union's debts by 2005. Russia joined the World Trade Organization in August 2012.

In 2006, Putin launched an industry consolidation programme to bring the main aircraft-producing companies under a single umbrella organization, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). In September 2020, the UAC general director announced that the UAC will receive the largest-ever post-Soviet government support package for the aircraft industry in order to pay and renegotiate the debt.

In 2014, Putin signed a deal to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Power of Siberia, which Putin has called the "world's biggest construction project", was launched in 2019 and is expected to continue for 30 years at an ultimate cost to China of $400bn. The ongoing financial crisis began in the second half of 2014 when the Russian ruble collapsed due to a decline in the price of oil and international sanctions against Russia. These events in turn led to loss of investor confidence and capital flight, although it has also been argued that the sanctions had little to no effect on Russia's economy. In 2014, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project named Putin their Person of the Year for furthering corruption and organized crime.

According to Meduza, Putin has since 2007 predicted on several occasions that Russia will become one of the world's five largest economies. In 2013, he said Russia was one of the five biggest economies in terms of gross domestic product but still lagged behind other countries on indicators such as labour productivity. By the end of 2023, Putin planned to spend almost 40% of public expenditures on defense and security.

Environmental policy

Main articles: Environment of Russia, Environmental issues in Russia, and Climate change in Russia

In 2004, Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, Russia did not face mandatory cuts, because the Kyoto Protocol limits emissions to a percentage increase or decrease from 1990 levels and Russia's greenhouse-gas emissions fell well below the 1990 baseline due to a drop in economic output after the breakup of the Soviet Union, excluding emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

In 2019 Russia joined the Paris Agreement. Russia's goal is to reach net zero by 2060, but its energy strategy to 2035 is mostly about burning more fossil fuels. Reporting military emissions is voluntary and, as of 2024, no data is available since before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Putin described climate change as a concerning fact with big consequences for Russia. He is not sure if it man made or not, but said that Russia is trying and will try to reduce man-made emissions with forests and "low-emission energy"; by this term, he intends Natural gas, Nuclear energy, and Hydroenergy in Russia. He said that rich countries should provide finance and technology to those with less money for lower emissions. Some describe his policy as "mimicry of climate policy" and say he turned environmentalism into tool of political influence.

Religious policy

Main article: Religion in Russia

Putin regularly attends the most important services of the Russian Orthodox Church on the main holy days and has established a good relationship with Patriarchs of the Russian Church, the late Alexy II of Moscow and the current Kirill of Moscow. As president, Putin took an active personal part in promoting the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, signed 17 May 2007, which restored relations between the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia after the 80-year schism.

Under Putin, the Hasidic Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia became increasingly influential within the Jewish community, partly due to the influence of Federation-supporting businessmen mediated through their alliances with Putin, notably Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Putin is popular amongst the Russian Jewish community, who see him as a force for stability. Russia's chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, said Putin "paid great attention to the needs of our community and related to us with a deep respect". In 2016, Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, also praised Putin for making Russia "a country where Jews are welcome".

Human rights organizations and religious freedom advocates have criticized the state of religious freedom in Russia. In 2016, Putin oversaw the passage of legislation that prohibited missionary activity in Russia. Nonviolent religious minority groups have been repressed under anti-extremism laws, especially Jehovah's Witnesses. One of the 2020 amendments to the Constitution of Russia directly refers to belief in God.

Military development

Main article: 2008 Russian military reform

The resumption of long-distance flights of Russia's strategic bombers was followed by the announcement by Russian defense minister Anatoliy Serdyukov during his meeting with Putin on 5 December 2007, that 11 ships, including the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, would take part in the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times.

Key elements of the reform included reducing the armed forces to a strength of one million, reducing the number of officers, centralizing officer training from 65 military schools into 10 systemic military training centers, creating a professional NCO corps, reducing the size of the central command, introducing more civilian logistics and auxiliary staff, elimination of cadre-strength formations, reorganizing the reserves, reorganizing the army into a brigade system, and reorganizing air forces into an airbase system instead of regiments.

According to the Kremlin, Putin embarked on a build-up of Russia's nuclear capabilities because of U.S. president George W. Bush's unilateral decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To counter what Putin sees as the United States' goal of undermining Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent, Moscow has embarked on a program to develop new weapons capable of defeating any new American ballistic missile defense or interception system. Some analysts believe that this nuclear strategy under Putin has brought Russia into violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Accordingly, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would no longer consider itself bound by the treaty's provisions, raising nuclear tensions between the two powers. This prompted Putin to state that Russia would not launch first in a nuclear conflict but that "an aggressor should know that vengeance is inevitable, that he will be annihilated, and we would be the victims of the aggression. We will go to heaven as martyrs".

Putin has also sought to increase Russian territorial claims in the Arctic and its military presence there. In August 2007, Russian expedition Arktika 2007, part of research related to the 2001 Russian territorial extension claim, planted a flag on the seabed at the North Pole. Both Russian submarines and troops deployed in the Arctic have been increasing.

Human rights policy

Main article: Human rights in Russia

See also: Dima Yakovlev Law, Russian foreign agent law, and Russian Internet Restriction Bill

New York City–based NGO Human Rights Watch, in a report titled Laws of Attrition, authored by Hugh Williamson, the British director of HRW's Europe & Central Asia Division, has claimed that since May 2012, when Putin was reelected as president, Russia has enacted many restrictive laws, started inspections of non-governmental organizations, harassed, intimidated and imprisoned political activists, and started to restrict critics. The new laws include the "foreign agents" law, which is widely regarded as overbroad by including Russian human rights organizations that receive some international grant funding, the treason law, and the assembly law, which penalizes many expressions of dissent. Human rights activists have criticized Russia for censoring speech of LGBT activists due to "the gay propaganda law" and increasing violence against LGBT+ people due to the law.

In 2020, Putin signed a law on labelling individuals and organizations receiving funding from abroad as "foreign agents". The law is an expansion of "foreign agent" legislation adopted in 2012.

As of June 2020, per the Memorial Human Rights Center, there were 380 political prisoners in Russia, including 63 individuals prosecuted, directly or indirectly, for political activities (including Alexey Navalny) and 245 prosecuted for their involvement with one of the Muslim organizations that are banned in Russia. 78 individuals on the list, i.e., more than 20% of the total, are residents of Crimea. As of December 2022, more than 4,000 people were prosecuted for criticizing the war in Ukraine under Russia's war censorship laws.

The media

See also: Mass media in Russia, Media freedom in Russia, and Propaganda in Russia

Scott Gehlbach, a professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has claimed that since 1999, Putin has systematically punished journalists who challenge his official point of view. Maria Lipman, an American writing in Foreign Affairs claims, "The crackdown that followed Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012 extended to the liberal media, which had until then been allowed to operate fairly independently". The Internet has attracted Putin's attention because his critics have tried to use it to challenge his control of information. Marian K. Leighton, who worked for the CIA as a Soviet analyst in the 1980s, says, "Having muzzled Russia's print and broadcast media, Putin focused his energies on the Internet."

Robert W. Orttung and Christopher Walker reported that "Reporters Without Borders, for instance, ranked Russia 148 in its 2013 list of 179 countries in terms of freedom of the press. It particularly criticized Russia for the crackdown on the political opposition and the failure of the authorities to vigorously pursue and bring to justice criminals who have murdered journalists. Freedom House ranks Russian media as "not free", indicating that basic safeguards and guarantees for journalists and media enterprises are absent. About two-thirds of Russians use television as their primary source of daily news, while around 85% of Russians get most of their information from Russian state media.

In the early 2000s, Putin and his circle began promoting the idea in Russian media that they are the modern-day version of the 17th-century Romanov tsars who ended Russia's "Time of Troubles", meaning they claim to be the peacemakers and stabilizers after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since the 2022 Ukraine invasion, Putin has only once granted an interview to a Western journalist, namely Tucker Carlson in February 2024.

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Putin has promoted explicitly conservative policies in social, cultural, and political matters, both at home and abroad. Putin has attacked globalism and neoliberalism and is identified by scholars with Russian conservatism. Putin has promoted new think tanks that bring together like-minded intellectuals and writers. For example, the Izborsky Club, founded in 2012 by the conservative right-wing journalist Alexander Prokhanov, stresses (i) Russian nationalism, (ii) the restoration of Russia's historical greatness, and (iii) systematic opposition to liberal ideas and policies. Vladislav Surkov, a senior government official, has been one of the key economic consultants during Putin's presidency.

In cultural and social affairs, Putin has collaborated closely with the Russian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Church, endorsed his election in 2012 stating Putin's terms were like "a miracle of God". Steven Myers reports, "The church, once heavily repressed, had emerged from the Soviet collapse as one of the most respected institutions... Now Kiril led the faithful directly into an alliance with the state".

Mark Woods, a Baptist Union of Great Britain minister and contributing editor to Christian Today, provides specific examples of how the Church has backed the expansion of Russian power into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Some Russian Orthodox believers consider Putin a corrupt and brutal strongman or even a tyrant. Others do not admire him but appreciate that he aggravates their political opponents. Still others appreciate that Putin defends some although not all Orthodox teachings, whether or not he believes in them himself.

On abortion, Putin stated: "In the modern world, the decision is up to the woman herself". This put him at odds with the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2020, he supported efforts to reduce the number of abortions instead of prohibiting it. On 28 November 2023, during a speech to the World Russian People's Council, Putin urged Russian women to have "seven, eight, or even more children" and said "large families must become the norm, a way of life for all of Russia's people".

Putin supported the 2020 Russian constitutional referendum, which passed and defined marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman in the Constitution of Russia.

International sporting events

In 2007, Putin led a successful effort on behalf of Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2014 Winter Paralympics, the first Winter Olympic Games to ever be hosted by Russia. In 2008, the city of Kazan won the bid for the 2013 Summer Universiade; on 2 December 2010, Russia won the right to host the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and 2018 FIFA World Cup, also for the first time in Russian history. In 2013, Putin stated that gay athletes would not face any discrimination at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

Foreign policy

Main article: Foreign policy of Vladimir Putin

See also: Foreign relations of Russia and List of international presidential trips made by Vladimir Putin

Generally, Putin's tenure experienced tensions with the West, as well as stronger relations with China. Anna Borshchevskaya, in her 2022 book, summarizes Putin's main foreign policy objectives as originating in his 30 December 1999 document, which appeared on the government's website, "Russia at the Turn of the Millennium". She presents Putin as orienting himself to the plan that "Russia is a country with unique values in danger of losing its unity – which... is a historic Russian fear. This again points to the fundamental issue of Russia's identity issues – and how the state had manipulated these to drive anti-Western security narratives to erode the US-led global order... Moreover, a look at Russia's distribution of forces over the years under Putin has been heavily weighted towards the south (Syria, Ukraine, Middle East), another indicator of the Kremlin's threat perceptions".

Leonid Bershidsky analyzed Putin's interview with the Financial Times and concluded, "Putin is an imperialist of the old Soviet school, rather than a nationalist or a racist, and he has cooperated with, and promoted, people who are known to be gay". Putin spoke favorably of artificial intelligence regarding foreign policy, "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world".

Asia-Pacific

See also: India–Russia relations and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

In 2012, Putin wrote an article in Indian newspaper The Hindu, saying: "The Declaration on Strategic Partnership between India and Russia signed in October 2000 became a truly historic step". India remains the largest customer of Russian military equipment, and the two countries share a historically strong strategic and diplomatic relationship. In October 2022, Putin described India and China as "close allies and partners". Under Putin, Russia has maintained positive relations with the Asian states of SCO and BRICS, which include China, India, Pakistan, and post-Soviet states of Central Asia.

Putin and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe frequently met each other to discuss the Japan–Russia territorial disputes. Putin also voiced his willingness to construct a rail bridge between the two countries. Despite numerous meetings, no agreement was signed before Abe's resignation in 2020. Putin also made the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit North Korea, meeting Kim Jong Il in July 2000, shortly after a visit to South Korea.

Putin made three visits to Mongolia and has enjoyed good relations with its neighbor. Putin and his Mongolian counterpart signed a permanent treaty on friendship between the two states in September 2019, further enhancing trade and cultural exchanges. Putin became the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit Indonesia in half a century in 2007, resulting in the signing of an arms deal. In another visit, Putin commented on long-standing ties and friendship between Russia and Indonesia. Russia has also boosted relations with Vietnam after 2011, and with Afghanistan in the 2010s, giving military and economic aid. The relations between Russia and the Philippines received a boost in 2016 as Putin forged closer bilateral ties with his Filipino counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte. Putin has good relations with Malaysia and its then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Putin criticized violence in Myanmar against the Rohingya minorities in 2017. Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Russia has pledged to boost ties with the Myanmar military regime.

In September 2007, Putin visited Indonesia, the first Russian leader to do so in over 50 years. In the same month, Putin also attended the APEC meeting held in Sydney, Australia, where he met with Prime Minister John Howard and signed a uranium trade deal for Australia to sell uranium to Russia. This was the first visit by a Russian president to Australia. Putin again visited Australia for 2014 G20 Brisbane summit. The Abbott government denounced Putin's use of military force in Ukraine in 2014 as "bullying" and "utterly unacceptable". Amid calls to ban Putin from attending the 2014 G20 Summit, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he would "shirtfront" (challenge) the Russian leader over the shooting down of MH17 by Russian-backed rebels, which had killed 38 Australians. Putin denied responsibility for the killings.

China

See also: China–Russia relations

In the 21st century, Sino-Russian relations have significantly strengthened bilaterally and economically—the Treaty of Friendship, and the construction of the ESPO oil pipeline and the Power of Siberia gas pipeline formed a "special relationship" between the two great powers. Putin and Chinese leader Hu Jintao held their first meeting in December 2002. The two leaders met regularly, meeting face to face five or six times a year. Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also met regularly, with Wen quipping in 2007 that "We didn’t even use prepared speeches." China backed Russia in the Second Chechen War and regards to Russia's concerns of NATO expansion, while Russia backed China regarding the issues of Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. The two countries also increasingly cooperated in the United Nations Security Council.

On the eve of a 2013 state visit to Moscow by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Putin remarked that the two nations were forging a special relationship. Xi visited the Operational Command Headquarters of the Russian Armed Forces, the first time a foreign leader visited the building. Ties have continued to deepen after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Russia increasingly becoming dependent on China while it is under large-scale international sanctions.