Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:43, 1 May 2022

Vladimir Putin
Владимир Путин
Putin in 2021
President of Russia
Incumbent
Assumed office 7 May 2012
Prime Minister	Dmitry Medvedev Mikhail Mishustin
Preceded by	Dmitry Medvedev
In office 7 May 2000 – 7 May 2008 Acting: 31 December 1999 – 7 May 2000
Prime Minister	Mikhail Kasyanov Mikhail Fradkov Viktor Zubkov
Preceded by	Boris Yeltsin
Succeeded by	Dmitry Medvedev
Prime Minister of Russia
In office 8 May 2008 – 7 May 2012
President	Dmitry Medvedev
First Deputy	Sergei Ivanov Viktor Zubkov Igor Shuvalov
Preceded by	Viktor Zubkov
Succeeded by	Dmitry Medvedev
In office 9 August 1999 – 7 May 2000
President	Boris Yeltsin
First Deputy	Nikolai Aksyonenko Viktor Khristenko Mikhail Kasyanov
Preceded by	Sergei Stepashin
Succeeded by	Mikhail Kasyanov
Secretary of the Security Council of Russia
In office 9 March 1999 – 9 August 1999
President	Boris Yeltsin
Preceded by	Nikolay Bordyuzha
Succeeded by	Sergei Ivanov
Director of the Federal Security Service
In office 25 July 1998 – 29 March 1999
President	Boris Yeltsin
Preceded by	Nikolay Kovalyov
Succeeded by	Nikolai Patrushev
Additional positions Leader of All-Russia People's Front Incumbent Assumed office 12 June 2013 Preceded by Office established Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union State In office 27 May 2008 – 18 July 2012 Chairman Alexander Lukashenko General Secretary Pavel Borodin Preceded by Viktor Zubkov Succeeded by Dmitry Medvedev Leader of United Russia In office 7 May 2008 – 26 May 2012 Preceded by Boris Gryzlov Succeeded by Dmitry Medvedev
Personal details
Born	Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (1952-10-07) 7 October 1952 (age 72) Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Political party	Independent (1991–1995; 2001–2008; 2012–present)
Other political affiliations	All-Russia People's Front (2011–present) United Russia (2008–2012) Unity (1999–2001) Our Home – Russia (1995–1999) CPSU (1975–1991)
Spouse	Lyudmila Shkrebneva ​ ​(m. 1983; div. 2014)​
Children	At least 2, Maria and Katerina
Parents	Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (father) Maria Ivanovna Putina (mother)
Residence(s)	Novo-Ogaryovo, Moscow
Alma mater	Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg Mining Institute
Awards	Order of Honour
Signature
Website	eng.putin.kremlin.ru
Military service
Allegiance	Soviet Union Russia
Branch/service	KGB; FSB; Russian Armed Forces
Years of service	1975–1991 1998–1999 2000–present
Rank	Colonel Supreme Commander-in-Chief
Battles/wars	Second Chechen War Russo-Georgian War Russo-Ukrainian War Syrian Civil War

This article is part of a series aboutVladimir Putin
Political offices President of Russia (2000–2008; 2012–present) Prime Minister of Russia (1999–2000; 2008–2012) Policies Domestic policy legislation and programs military reform constitutional reform national champions priority projects stabilization fund Foreign policy 2014 annexation of Crimea 2014 war in Donbas 2015 intervention in Syria 2022 invasion of Ukraine 2022 annexation of four Ukrainian regions Putin's Plan Elections Electoral history 2000 campaign 2004 campaign 2012 campaign 2018 campaign PutinTeam 2024 campaign Premiership First Cabinet Second Cabinet Presidency Inaugurations 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th International trips President Prime Minister Political groups Opposition Speeches Munich 2007 Crimea 2014 Valdai 2014 Federal Assembly 2020 Donetsk and Luhansk 2022 Ukraine 2022 Moscow 2022 Summits Ljubljana Bratislava Helsinki Geneva Political career Rise to power Public image Putinism Language Opinions Pets Honours Ozero
v t e

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (/ˈpuːtɪn/; Template:Lang-ru; [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ˈputʲɪn] ; born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia, a position he has filled since 2012, and previously from 2000 until 2008. He was also the prime minister from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012. Putin is the second-longest currently serving European president after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

He worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of president Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999. After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later, was elected outright to his first term as president. He was reelected in 2004. As he was then constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev, and returned to the presidency in 2012 in an election marred by allegations of fraud and protests; he was reelected again in 2018. In April 2021, following a referendum, he signed into law constitutional amendments including one that would allow him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036.

During Putin's first tenure as president, the Russian economy grew on average by seven percent per year, following economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas. He also led Russia during a war against Chechen separatists, reestablishing federal control of the region. As prime minister under Medvedev, he oversaw military reform and police reform, as well as Russia's victory in its war against Georgia. During his third term as president, Russia annexed Crimea and sponsored a war in eastern Ukraine with several military incursions made, resulting in international sanctions and a financial crisis in Russia. He also ordered a military intervention in Syria against rebel and jihadist groups. During his fourth term as president, his government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and he presided over a military buildup on the border of Ukraine. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of committing atrocities against its Russian-speaking minority, and in February 2022, he ordered a full-scale invasion of the country, leading to widespread international condemnation, as well as expanded sanctions and calls for Putin to be pursued with war crime charges.

Under Putin's leadership, Russia has experienced democratic backsliding and a shift to authoritarianism. Putin's rule has been characterised by endemic corruption, the jailing and repression of political opponents, the intimidation and suppression of independent media in Russia, and a lack of free and fair elections. Putin's Russia has scored poorly on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index.

Early life

Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), the youngest of three children of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna Putina (née Shelomova; 1911–1998). 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. Early in World War II, 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 Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.

On 1 September 1960, Putin started at School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, near his home. He was one of a few in the class of approximately 45 pupils who were not yet members of the Young Pioneer organization. At age 12, he began to practise sambo and judo. In his free time, he enjoyed reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin. Putin studied German at Saint Petersburg High School 281 and speaks German as a second language.

Education

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) and remained a member until it ceased to exist in 1991.

Putin met Anatoly Sobchak, an assistant professor who taught business law, and who later became the co-author of the Russian constitution and of corruption schemes in France. Putin would be influential in Sobchak's career in Saint Petersburg, and Sobchak would be influential in Putin's career in Moscow.

KGB career

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 (counter-intelligence), 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.

Multiple reports have suggested Putin was sent by the KGB to New Zealand, allegedly working for some time undercover as, among at least one other alias, a Bata shoe salesman in central Wellington. From 1985 to 1990, he served in Dresden, East Germany, using a cover identity as a translator.

Unlike Putin's presence in East Germany, his time in New Zealand has never been confirmed by Russian security services, but corroborated through New Zealand eyewitness accounts and government records. Former Waitākere City mayor Bob Harvey and Prime Minister during the 1980s David Lange both alleged that Putin served in both Wellington and Auckland.

"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 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, 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 an 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.

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 told about the selection criteria during this burning; for example, concerning Stasi files or about files of other agencies of the German Democratic Republic or of the USSR. He explained that many documents were left to Germany only because the furnace burst but 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, though 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, soon to be the Mayor of Leningrad. Putin claims 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 the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin said: "As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on", although he noted that the choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with "the organs".

In 1999, Putin described communism as "a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization".

Political career

1990–1996: Saint Petersburg administration

In May 1990, Putin was appointed as an advisor on international affairs to the mayor of Leningrad Anatoly Sobchak. In a 2017 interview with Oliver Stone, Putin said that he resigned from the KGB in 1991, following the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, as he did not agree with what had happened and did not want to be part of the intelligence in the new administration. According to Putin's statements in 2018 and 2021, he may have worked as a private taxi driver to earn extra money, or considered such a job.

On 28 June 1991, he became head of the Committee for External Relations of the Mayor's Office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments and registering business ventures. Within a year, Putin was investigated by the city legislative council led by Marina Salye. It was concluded that he had understated prices and permitted the export of metals valued at $93 million in exchange for foreign food aid that never arrived. Despite the investigators' recommendation that Putin be fired, Putin remained head of the Committee for External Relations until 1996. From 1994 to 1996, he held several other political and governmental positions in Saint Petersburg.

In March 1994, Putin was appointed as first deputy chairman of the Government of Saint Petersburg. In May 1995, he organized the Saint Petersburg branch of the pro-government Our Home – Russia political party, the liberal party of power founded by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. In 1995, he managed the legislative election campaign for that party, and from 1995 through June 1997, he was the leader of its Saint Petersburg branch.

1996–1999: Early Moscow career

In June 1996, Sobchak lost his bid for reelection in Saint Petersburg, and Putin, who had led his election campaign, resigned from his positions in the city administration. He moved to Moscow and was appointed as deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Department headed by Pavel Borodin. He occupied this position until March 1997. He was responsible for the foreign property of the state and organized the transfer of the former assets of the Soviet Union and the CPSU to the Russian Federation.

On 26 March 1997, President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin deputy chief of the Presidential Staff, a post which he retained until May 1998, and chief of the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management Department (until June 1998). His predecessor in this position was Alexei Kudrin and his successor was Nikolai Patrushev, both future prominent politicians and Putin's associates.

On 27 June 1997, at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, guided by rector Vladimir Litvinenko, Putin defended his Candidate of Science dissertation in economics, titled The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations. This exemplified the custom in Russia whereby a young rising official would write a scholarly work in mid-career. Putin's thesis was plagiarized. Fellows at the Brookings Institution found that 15 pages were copied from an American textbook.

On 25 May 1998, Putin was appointed First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff for the regions, in succession to Viktoriya Mitina. On 15 July, he was appointed head of the commission for the preparation of agreements on the delimitation of the power of the regions and head of the federal center attached to the president, replacing Sergey Shakhray. After Putin's appointment, the commission completed no such agreements, although during Shakhray's term as the head of the Commission 46 such agreements had been signed. Later, after becoming president, Putin cancelled all 46 agreements.

On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the primary intelligence and security organization of the Russian Federation and the successor to the KGB.

1999: First premiership

On 9 August 1999, Putin was appointed one of three first deputy prime ministers, and later on that day, was appointed acting prime minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Yeltsin. Yeltsin also announced that he wanted to see Putin as his successor. Later on that same day, Putin agreed to run for the presidency.

On 16 August, the State Duma approved his appointment as prime minister with 233 votes in favor (vs. 84 against, 17 abstained), while a simple majority of 226 was required, making him Russia's fifth prime minister in fewer than eighteen months. On his appointment, few expected Putin, virtually unknown to the general public, to last any longer than his predecessors. He was initially regarded as a Yeltsin loyalist; like other prime ministers of Boris Yeltsin, Putin did not choose ministers himself, his cabinet was determined by the presidential administration.

Yeltsin's main opponents and would-be successors were already campaigning to replace the ailing president, and they fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a potential successor. Following the Russian apartment bombings and the invasion of Dagestan by mujahideen, including the former KGB agents, based in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Putin's law-and-order image and unrelenting approach to the Second Chechen War soon combined to raise his popularity and allowed him to overtake his rivals.

While not formally associated with any party, Putin pledged his support to the newly formed Unity Party, which won the second largest percentage of the popular vote (23.3%) in the December 1999 Duma elections, and in turn supported Putin.

1999–2000: Acting presidency

On 31 December 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the Constitution of Russia, Putin became Acting President of the Russian Federation. On assuming this role, Putin went on a previously scheduled visit to Russian troops in Chechnya.

The first presidential decree that Putin signed on 31 December 1999 was titled "On guarantees for the former president of the Russian Federation and the members of his family". This ensured that "corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives" would not be pursued. This was most notably targeted at the Mabetex bribery case in which Yeltsin's family members were involved. On 30 August 2000, a criminal investigation (number 18/238278-95) in which Putin himself, as a member of the Saint Petersburg city government, was one of the suspects, was dropped.

On 30 December 2000, yet another case against the prosecutor general was dropped "for lack of evidence", despite thousands of documents having been forwarded by Swiss prosecutors. On 12 February 2001, Putin signed a similar federal law which replaced the decree of 1999. A case regarding Putin's alleged corruption in metal exports from 1992 was brought back by Marina Salye, but she was silenced and forced to leave Saint Petersburg.

While his opponents had been preparing for an election in June 2000, Yeltsin's resignation resulted in the presidential elections being held on 26 March 2000; Putin won in the first round with 53% of the vote.

2000–2004: First presidential term

The inauguration of President Putin occurred on 7 May 2000. He appointed the minister of finance, Mikhail Kasyanov, as prime minister.

The first major challenge to Putin's popularity came in August 2000, when he was criticized for the alleged mishandling of the Kursk submarine disaster. That criticism was largely because it took several days for Putin to return from vacation, and several more before he visited the scene.

Between 2000 and 2004, Putin set about the reconstruction of the impoverished condition of the country, apparently winning a power-struggle with the Russian oligarchs, reaching a 'grand bargain' with them. This bargain allowed the oligarchs to maintain most of their powers, in exchange for their explicit support for—and alignment with—Putin's government.

The Moscow theater hostage crisis occurred in October 2002. Many in the Russian press and in the international media warned that the deaths of 130 hostages in the special forces' rescue operation during the crisis would severely damage President Putin's popularity. However, shortly after the siege had ended, the Russian president enjoyed record public approval ratings—83% of Russians declared themselves satisfied with Putin and his handling of the siege.

In 2003, a referendum was held in Chechnya, adopting a new constitution which declares that the Republic of Chechnya is a part of Russia; on the other hand, the region did acquire autonomy. Chechnya has been gradually stabilized with the establishment of the Parliamentary elections and a Regional Government. Throughout the Second Chechen War, Russia severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement; however, sporadic attacks by rebels continued to occur throughout the northern Caucasus.

2004–2008: Second presidential term

On 14 March 2004, Putin was elected to the presidency for a second term, receiving 71% of the vote. The Beslan school hostage crisis took place on 1–3 September 2004; more than 330 people died, including 186 children.

The near 10-year period prior to the rise of Putin after the dissolution of Soviet rule was a time of upheaval in Russia. In a 2005 Kremlin speech, Putin characterized the collapse of the Soviet Union as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century." Putin elaborated, "Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself." The country's cradle-to-grave social safety net was gone and life expectancy declined in the period preceding Putin's rule. In 2005, the National Priority Projects were launched to improve Russia's health care, education, housing, and agriculture.

The continued criminal prosecution of the wealthiest man in Russia at the time, president of Yukos oil and gas company Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for fraud and tax evasion was seen by the international press as a retaliation for Khodorkovsky's donations to both liberal and communist opponents of the Kremlin. Khodorkovsky was arrested, Yukos was bankrupted, and the company's assets were auctioned at below-market value, with the largest share acquired by the state company Rosneft. The fate of Yukos was seen as a sign of a broader shift of Russia towards a system of state capitalism. This was underscored in July 2014, when shareholders of Yukos were awarded $50 billion in compensation by the Permanent Arbitration Court in The Hague.

On 7 October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed corruption in the Russian army and its conduct in Chechnya, was shot in the lobby of her apartment building, on Putin's birthday. The death of Politkovskaya triggered international criticism, with accusations that Putin had failed to protect the country's new independent media. Putin himself said that her death caused the government more problems than her writings.

In 2007, "Dissenters' Marches" were organized by the opposition group The Other Russia, led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov and national-Bolshevist leader Eduard Limonov. Following prior warnings, demonstrations in several Russian cities were met by police action, which included interfering with the travel of the protesters and the arrests of as many as 150 people who attempted to break through police lines.

On 12 September 2007, Putin dissolved the government upon the request of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. Fradkov commented that it was to give the President a "free hand" in the run-up to the parliamentary election. Viktor Zubkov was appointed the new prime minister.

In December 2007, United Russia won 64.24% of the popular vote in their run for State Duma according to election preliminary results. United Russia's victory in the December 2007 elections was seen by many as an indication of strong popular support of the then Russian leadership and its policies.

2008–2012: Second premiership

Putin was barred from a third consecutive term by the Constitution. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected his successor. In a power-switching operation on 8 May 2008, only a day after handing the presidency to Medvedev, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia, maintaining his political dominance.

Putin has said that overcoming the consequences of the world economic crisis was one of the two main achievements of his second premiership. The other was stabilizing the size of Russia's population between 2008 and 2011 following a long period of demographic collapse that began in the 1990s.

At the United Russia Congress in Moscow on 24 September 2011, Medvedev officially proposed that Putin stand for the presidency in 2012, an offer Putin accepted. Given United Russia's near-total dominance of Russian politics, many observers believed that Putin was assured of a third term. The move was expected to see Medvedev stand on the United Russia ticket in the parliamentary elections in December, with a goal of becoming prime minister at the end of his presidential term.

After the parliamentary elections on 4 December 2011, tens of thousands of Russians engaged in protests against alleged electoral fraud, the largest protests in Putin's time. Protesters criticized Putin and United Russia and demanded annulment of the election results. Those protests sparked the fear of a colour revolution in society. Putin allegedly organized a number of paramilitary groups loyal to himself and to the United Russia party in the period between 2005 and 2012.

2012–2018: Third presidential term

On 24 September 2011, while speaking at the United Russia party congress, Medvedev announced that he would recommend the party nominate Putin as its presidential candidate. He also revealed that the two men had long ago cut a deal to allow Putin to run for president in 2012. This switch was termed by many in the media as "Rokirovka", the Russian term for the chess move "castling".

On 4 March 2012, Putin won the 2012 Russian presidential election in the first round, with 63.6% of the vote, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging. Opposition groups accused Putin and the United Russia party of fraud. While efforts to make the elections transparent were publicized, including the usage of webcams in polling stations, the vote was criticized by the Russian opposition and by international observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe for procedural irregularities.

Anti-Putin protests took place during and directly after the presidential campaign. The most notorious protest was the Pussy Riot performance on 21 February, and subsequent trial. An estimated 8,000–20,000 protesters gathered in Moscow on 6 May, when eighty people were injured in confrontations with police, and 450 were arrested, with another 120 arrests taking place the following day. A counter-protest of Putin supporters occurred which culminated in a gathering of an estimated 130,000 supporters at the Luzhniki Stadium, Russia's largest stadium. Some of the attendees stated that they had been paid to come, were forced to come by their employers, or were misled into believing that they were going to attend a folk festival instead. The rally is considered to be the largest in support of Putin to date.

Putin's presidency was inaugurated in the Kremlin on 7 May 2012. On his first day as president, Putin issued 14 presidential decrees, which are sometimes called the "May Decrees" by the media, including a lengthy one stating wide-ranging goals for the Russian economy. Other decrees concerned education, housing, skilled labor training, relations with the European Union, the defense industry, inter-ethnic relations, and other policy areas dealt with in Putin's program articles issued during the presidential campaign.

In 2012 and 2013, Putin and the United Russia party backed stricter legislation against the LGBT community, in Saint Petersburg, Archangelsk, and Novosibirsk; a law called the Russian gay propaganda law, that is against "homosexual propaganda" (which prohibits such symbols as the rainbow flag, as well as published works containing homosexual content) was adopted by the State Duma in June 2013. Responding to international concerns about Russia's legislation, Putin asked critics to note that the law was a "ban on the propaganda of pedophilia and homosexuality" and he stated that homosexual visitors to the 2014 Winter Olympics should "leave the children in peace" but denied there was any "professional, career or social discrimination" against homosexuals in Russia.

In June 2013, Putin attended a televised rally of the All-Russia People's Front where he was elected head of the movement, which was set up in 2011. According to journalist Steve Rosenberg, the movement is intended to "reconnect the Kremlin to the Russian people" and one day, if necessary, replace the increasingly unpopular United Russia party that currently backs Putin.

Russo-Ukrainian War

In 2014, Russia made several military incursions into Ukrainian territory. After the Euromaidan protests and the fall of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, Russian soldiers without insignias took control of strategic positions and infrastructure within the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Russia then annexed Crimea and Sevastopol after a referendum in which, according to official results, Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation.

Subsequently, demonstrations against Ukrainian Rada legislative actions by pro-Russian groups in the Donbas area of Ukraine escalated into an armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russia-backed separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. In August 2014, Russian military vehicles crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk Oblast. The incursion by the Russian military was seen by Ukrainian authorities as responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September.

In November 2014, the Ukrainian military reported intensive movement of troops and equipment from Russia into the separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine. The Associated Press reported 80 unmarked military vehicles on the move in rebel-controlled areas. An OSCE Special Monitoring Mission observed convoys of heavy weapons and tanks in DPR-controlled territory without insignia. OSCE monitors further stated that they observed vehicles transporting ammunition and soldiers' dead bodies crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border under the guise of humanitarian-aid convoys.

As of early August 2015, the OSCE observed over 21 such vehicles marked with the Russian military code for soldiers killed in action. According to The Moscow Times, Russia has tried to intimidate and silence human-rights workers discussing Russian soldiers' deaths in the conflict. The OSCE repeatedly reported that its observers were denied access to the areas controlled by "combined Russian-separatist forces".

In October 2015, The Washington Post reported that Russia had redeployed some of its elite units from Ukraine to Syria in recent weeks to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In December 2015, Putin admitted that Russian military intelligence officers were operating in Ukraine.

According to academic Andrei Tsygankov, many members of the international community assumed that Putin's annexation of Crimea had initiated a completely new kind of Russian foreign policy. They took the annexation of Crimea to mean that his foreign policy had shifted "from state-driven foreign policy" to taking an offensive stance to recreate the Soviet Union. He also says that this policy shift can be understood as Putin trying to defend nations in Russia's sphere of influence from "encroaching western power". While the act to annex the Crimea was bold and drastic, his new foreign policy may have more similarities to his older policies.

Intervention in Syria

On 30 September 2015, President Putin authorized Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war, following a formal request by the Syrian government for military help against rebel and jihadist groups.

The Russian military activities consisted of air strikes, cruise missile strikes and the use of front line advisors and Russian special forces against militant groups opposed to the Syrian government, including the Syrian opposition, as well as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in the Levant), Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Army of Conquest. After Putin's announcement on 14 March 2016 that the mission he had set for the Russian military in Syria had been "largely accomplished" and ordered the withdrawal of the "main part" of the Russian forces from Syria, Russian forces deployed in Syria continued to actively operate in support of the Syrian government.

Russia's interference in the 2016 US election

In January 2017, a U.S. intelligence community assessment expressed high confidence that Putin personally ordered an influence campaign, initially to denigrate Hillary Clinton and to harm her electoral chances and potential presidency, then later developing "a clear preference" for Donald Trump. Trump consistently denied any Russian interference in the U.S. election, as did Putin in December 2016, March 2017, June 2017, and July 2017.

Putin later stated that interference was "theoretically possible" and could have been perpetrated by "patriotically minded" Russian hackers, and on another occasion claimed "not even Russians, but Ukrainians, Tatars or Jews, but with Russian citizenship" might have been responsible. In July 2018, The New York Times reported that the CIA had long nurtured a Russian source who eventually rose to a position close to Putin, allowing the source to pass key information in 2016 about Putin's direct involvement. Putin continued similar attempts in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

2018–present: Fourth presidential term

Putin won the 2018 Russian presidential election with more than 76% of the vote. His fourth term began on 7 May 2018, and will last until 2024. On the same day, Putin invited Dmitry Medvedev to form a new government. On 15 May 2018, Putin took part in the opening of the movement along the highway section of the Crimean bridge. On 18 May 2018, Putin signed decrees on the composition of the new Government. On 25 May 2018, Putin announced that he would not run for president in 2024, justifying this in compliance with the Russian Constitution. On 14 June 2018, Putin opened the 21st FIFA World Cup, which took place in Russia for the first time.

In September 2019, Putin's administration interfered with the results of Russia's nationwide regional elections and manipulated it by eliminating all candidates in the opposition. The event that was aimed at contributing to the ruling party, United Russia's victory, also contributed to inciting mass protests for democracy, leading to large-scale arrests and cases of police brutality.

On 15 January 2020, Medvedev and his entire government resigned after Putin's 2020 Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly. Putin suggested major constitutional amendments that could extend his political power after presidency. At the same time, on behalf of Putin, he continued to exercise his powers until the formation of a new government. Putin suggested that Medvedev take the newly created post of deputy chairman of the Security Council.

On the same day, Putin nominated Mikhail Mishustin, head of the country's Federal Tax Service for the post of prime minister. The next day, he was confirmed by the State Duma to the post, and appointed prime minister by Putin's decree. This was the first time ever that a prime minister was confirmed without any votes against. On 21 January 2020, Mishustin presented to Putin a draft structure of his Cabinet. On the same day, the president signed a decree on the structure of the Cabinet and appointed the proposed ministers.

COVID-19 pandemic

On 15 March 2020, Putin instructed to form a Working Group of the State Council to counteract the spread of coronavirus. Putin appointed Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin as the head of the group.

On 22 March 2020, after a phone call with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Putin arranged the Russian army to send military medics, special disinfection vehicles and other medical equipment to Italy, which was the European country hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 24 March 2020, Putin visited a hospital in Moscow's Kommunarka, where patients with coronavirus are kept, where he spoke with them and with doctors. Putin began working remotely from his office at Novo-Ogaryovo. According to Dmitry Peskov, Putin passes daily tests for coronavirus, and his health is not in danger.

On 25 March, President Putin announced in a televised address to the nation that the 22 April constitutional referendum would be postponed due to the coronavirus. He added that the next week would be a nationwide paid holiday and urged Russians to stay at home. Putin also announced a list of measures of social protection, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and changes in fiscal policy. Putin announced the following measures for microenterprises, small- and medium-sized businesses: deferring tax payments (except Russia's value-added tax) for the next six months, cutting the size of social security contributions in half, deferring social security contributions, deferring loan repayments for the next six months, a six-month moratorium on fines, debt collection, and creditors' applications for bankruptcy of debtor enterprises.

On 2 April 2020, Putin again issued an address in which he announced prolongation of the non-working time until 30 April. Putin likened Russia's fight against COVID-19 to Russia's battles with invading Pecheneg and Cuman steppe nomads in the 10th and 11th centuries. In a 24 to 27 April Levada poll, 48% of Russian respondents said that they disapproved of Putin's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and his strict isolation and lack of leadership during the crisis was widely commented as sign of losing his "strongman" image.

In June 2021, Putin said he was fully vaccinated against the disease with the Sputnik V vaccine, emphasising that while vaccinations should be voluntary, making them mandatory in some professions would slow down the spread of COVID-19. In September, Putin entered self-isolation after people in his inner circle tested positive for the disease.

Constitutional referendum and amendments

Putin signed an executive order on 3 July 2020 to officially insert amendments into the Russian Constitution, allowing him to run for two additional six-year terms. These amendments took effect on 4 July 2020.

Since 11 July, protests have been held in the Khabarovsk Krai in Russia's Far East in support of arrested regional governor Sergei Furgal. The 2020 Khabarovsk Krai protests have become increasingly anti-Putin. A July 2020 Levada poll found that 45% of surveyed Russians supported the protests.

On 22 December 2020, Putin signed a bill giving lifetime prosecutorial immunity to Russian ex-presidents.

2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis and invasion

Following the pro-western Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014, Putin had had seized eastern regions of the nation and annexed Crimea. In February 2022, he launched a war to gain control of the remainder of the country and overthrow the elected government under the pretext that it was run by "Nazis". The invasion of Ukraine led to worldwide condemnation of Putin, and massive sanctions on the Russian Federation.

In September 2021, Ukraine had conducted military exercises with NATO forces. The Kremlin warned that NATO expanding military infrastructure in Ukraine would cross "red lines" for Putin. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied allegations that Russia was preparing for a possible invasion of Ukraine.

On 30 November, Putin stated that an enlargement of NATO in Ukraine, especially the deployment of any long-range ballistic missiles capable of striking Russian cities or U.S. national missile defense systems similar to those in Romania and Poland, would be a "red line" issue for the Kremlin. Putin asked President Joe Biden for legal guarantees that NATO would not expand eastward or put "weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory". The U.S. and NATO have rejected Putin's demands.

The Kremlin repeatedly denied that it had any plans to invade Ukraine. Putin dismissed such fears as "alarmist". In December 2021, a Levada Center poll found that about 50% of Russians believed the U.S. and NATO are to blame for the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, while 16% blamed Ukraine, and 4% blamed Russia. On 7 February 2022, retired Russian Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, who is active in politics as the chairman of the All-Russian Officers Assembly, publicly called for Putin to resign over threats of a "criminal" invasion of Ukraine.

In February 2022, Putin warned that Ukraine's accession to NATO could embolden Ukraine to reclaim control over Russian-annexed Crimea or areas ruled by pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, saying: "Imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and a military operation begins. What – are we going to fight with NATO? Has anyone thought about this?" On 7 February, Putin said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron that " number of ideas, proposals ... are possible as a basis for further steps. We will do everything to find compromises that suit everyone." Putin promised not to carry out new military initiatives near Ukraine.

On 15 February, the Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, backed a resolution calling for diplomatic recognition of two self-proclaimed separatist republics in Donbas. On 21 February, Putin signed a decree recognizing the separatist republics as independent states. On 24 February, Putin in a televised address announced a "special military operation" in Ukraine, launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He said the purpose of the "operation" was to "protect the people" in the predominantly Russian-speaking region of Donbas who, according to Putin, "for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime". Putin said that "all responsibility for possible bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine".

Putin's invasion was met with international condemnation. International sanctions were widely imposed against Russia, including against Putin personally. Following an emergency meeting of United Nations Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: "President Putin, in the name of humanity, bring your troops back to Russia." US President Joe Biden called the invasion "unprovoked and unjustified". The European Union denounced the attack and promised to "hold the Kremlin accountable".

The invasion led to numerous calls for Putin to be pursued with war crime charges. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested Putin could face war crimes charges, and said that the UK and its allies are working to set up a "particular international war crimes tribunal for those involved in war crimes in the Ukraine theatre". President Joe Biden said that be believes Putin "meets the legal definition" of being "a war criminal".

In the Asia-Pacific, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand also responded firmly with denunciations and sanctions. From Africa, Kenya warned that Putin's actions threatened to "plunge back into new forms of domination and oppression". Even traditionally neutral Switzerland imposed sanctions. On 3 March, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to condemn Russia for the invasion and demanded the withdrawal of Putin's forces. The Resolution ES-11/1 was passed by 141 votes to five (with 35 abstentions). Putin's ally China and India abstained. International reactions to the invasion has given Russia a pariah status, facing increasing international isolation.

In response to what Putin called "aggressive statements" by the West, he put the Strategic Rocket Forces's nuclear deterrence units on high alert. U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Putin was "frustrated" by slow progress due to the unexpectedly strong Ukrainian defense, "directing unusual bursts of anger" at his inner circle.

On 4 March, Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian military and its operations, leading to some media outlets in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine. On 7 March, as a condition for ending the invasion, the Kremlin demanded Ukraine's neutrality, recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, and recognition of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.

Russia's actions in Ukraine, including the alleged use of cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons, have led to calls for investigations of possible war crimes. The International Criminal Court stated that it would investigate Russian conduct in Ukraine since 2013. Evidence of massacres against civilians such as in Bucha led to further sanctions, and renewed calls for prosecution for war crimes. The United States stated that it would seek to remove Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council, and on 7 April, Russia was suspended over reports of "gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights" after 93 members voted in favour.

On 16 March, Putin issued a warning to Russian "traitors" who he said the West wanted to use as a "fifth column" to destroy Russia. He said that Russians should undergo "natural and necessary self-cleansing of society" to rid themselves of "bastards" and pro-Western "traitors."

On 24 March, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution drafted by Ukraine and its allies which criticized Russia for creating a "dire" humanitarian situation and demanded aid access as well as the protection of civilians in Ukraine. 140 member states voted in favour, 38 abstained, and five voted against the resolution.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was "99.9 percent sure" that Putin thought the Ukrainians would welcome the invading forces with "flowers and smiles". U.S. and European Union officials believe that Putin has been misinformed by his advisers about Russian military's performance in Ukraine and the effect of sanctions on Russia.

Domestic policies

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 to 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 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 organised 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. In 2012, as proposed by Putin's successor, Dmitry Medvedev, the direct election of governors was re-introduced.

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 labor, 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.

Economic, industrial, and energy policies

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 all of the Soviet Union's debts by 2005. Russia joined the World Trade Organization on 22 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, though 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 a number of 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.

Environmental policy

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.

Putin personally supervises a number of protection programmes for rare and endangered animals in Russia, such as the Amur tiger, the white whale, the polar bear, and the snow leopard.

Religious policy

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.

Military development

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.

While from the early 2000s Russia started placing more money into its military and defense industry, it was only in 2008 that full-scale Russian military reform began, aiming to modernize the Russian Armed Forces and make them significantly more effective. The reform was largely carried out by Defense Minister Serdyukov during Medvedev's presidency, under the supervision of both Putin, as the head of government, and Medvedev, as the commander-in-chief of the Russian Armed Forces.

Key elements of the reform included reducing the armed forces to a strength of one million, reducing the number of officers, centralising officer training from 65 military schools into 10 'systemic' military training centres, creating a professional NCO corps, reducing the size of the central command, introducing more civilian logistics and auxiliary staff, elimination of cadre-strength formations, reorganising the reserves, reorganising the army into a brigade system, and reorganising 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

New York City-based NGO Human Rights Watch, in a report entitled 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 over-broad by including Russian human rights organizations which 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 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.

The media

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."

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.

Promoting conservatism

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 economics 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. 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

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 in regards to 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

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.

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. 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 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe frequently met each other to discuss the Japan–Russia territorial disputes. Putin also voiced his willingness of constructing a rail bridge between the two countries. Despite the amount of meetings, no agreement was signed before Abe's resignation in 2020.

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 also has good relations with Malaysia and its then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, as well as with Bangladesh, signing a nuclear power deal with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. 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 criticized violence in Myanmar against Rohingya minorities in 2017. Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Russia has pledged to boost ties with the Myanmar military regime.

Post-Soviet states

Under Putin, the Kremlin has consistently stated that Russia has a sphere of influence and "privileged interests" over other Post-Soviet states, which are referred to as the "near abroad" in Russia. It has also been stated that the post-Soviet states are strategically vital to Russian interests. Some Russia experts have compared this concept to the Monroe Doctrine.

A series of so-called colour revolutions in the post-Soviet states, namely the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, led to frictions in the relations of those countries with Russia. In December 2004, Putin criticized the Rose and Orange revolutions, saying: "If you have permanent revolutions you risk plunging the post-Soviet space into endless conflict".

Putin allegedly declared at a NATO-Russia summit in 2008 that if Ukraine joined NATO Russia could contend to annex the Ukrainian East and Crimea. At the summit, he told US President George W. Bush that "Ukraine is not even a state!" while the following year Putin referred to Ukraine as "Little Russia". Following the Revolution of Dignity in March 2014, the Russian Federation annexed Crimea. According to Putin, this was done because "Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia".

After the Russian annexation of Crimea, he said that Ukraine includes "regions of Russia's historic south" and "was created on a whim by the Bolsheviks". He went on to declare that the February 2014 ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had been orchestrated by the West as an attempt to weaken Russia. "Our Western partners have crossed a line. They behaved rudely, irresponsibly and unprofessionally," he said, adding that the people who had come to power in Ukraine were "nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites".

In a July 2014 speech during a Russian-supported armed insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, Putin stated he would use Russia's "entire arsenal of available means" up to "operations under international humanitarian law and the right of self-defence" to protect Russian speakers outside Russia. With the attainment of autocephaly by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in December 2018 and subsequent schism of the Russian Orthodox Church from Constantinople, a number of experts came to the conclusion that Putin's policy of forceful engagement in post-Soviet republics significantly backfired on him, leading to a situation where he "annexed Crimea, but lost Ukraine", and provoked a much more cautious approach to Russia among other post-Soviet countries.

In late August 2014, Putin stated: "People who have their own views on history and the history of our country may argue with me, but it seems to me that the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are practically one people". After making a similar statement, in late December 2015 he stated: "the Ukrainian culture, as well as Ukrainian literature, surely has a source of its own". In July 2021, he published a lengthy article On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians revisiting these themes, and saying the formation of a Ukrainian state hostile to Moscow was "comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us",—it was made mandatory reading for military-political training in the Russian Armed Forces.

In August 2008, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili attempted to restore control over the breakaway South Ossetia. However, the Georgian military was soon defeated in the resulting 2008 South Ossetia War after regular Russian forces entered South Ossetia and then other parts of Georgia, then also opened a second front in the other Georgian breakaway province of Abkhazia with Abkhazian forces.

Despite existing or past tensions between Russia and most of the post-Soviet states, Putin has followed the policy of Eurasian integration. Putin endorsed the idea of a Eurasian Union in 2011; the concept was proposed by the president of Kazakhstan in 1994. On 18 November 2011, the presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia signed an agreement setting a target of establishing the Eurasian Union by 2015. The Eurasian Union was established on 1 January 2015.

Under Putin, Russia's relations have improved significantly with Uzbekistan, the second largest post-Soviet republic after Ukraine. This was demonstrated in Putin's visit to Tashkent in May 2000, after lukewarm relations under Yeltsin and Islam Karimov who had long distanced itself from Moscow. In another meeting in 2014, Russia agreed to write off Uzbek debt.

United States, Western Europe, and NATO

Under Putin, Russia's relationships with NATO and the U.S. have passed through several stages. When he first became president, relations were cautious, but after the 9/11 attacks Putin quickly supported the U.S. in the War on Terror and the opportunity for partnership appeared. According to Stephen F. Cohen, the U.S. "repaid by further expansion of NATO to Russia's borders and by unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty", but others pointed out the applications from new countries willing to join NATO was driven primarily by Russian's behavior in Chechnya, Transnistria, Abkhazia, Yanayev putsch as well as calls to restore USSR in its previous borders by prominent Russian politicians.

From 2003, when Russia strongly opposed the U.S. when it waged the Iraq War, Putin became ever more distant from the West, and relations steadily deteriorated. According to Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, the narrative of the mainstream U.S. media, following that of the White House, became anti-Putin. In an interview with Michael Stürmer, Putin said there were three questions which most concerned Russia and Eastern Europe: namely, the status of Kosovo, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and American plans to build missile defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and suggested that all three were linked. His view was that concessions by the West on one of the questions might be met with concessions from Russia on another.

One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign. ... Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area.

In a January 2007 interview, Putin said Russia was in favor of a democratic multipolar world and strengthening the systems of international law. In February 2007, Putin criticized what he called the United States' monopolistic dominance in global relations, and "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations". He said the result of it is that "no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race". This came to be known as the Munich Speech, and NATO secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called the speech "disappointing and not helpful."

The months following Putin's Munich Speech were marked by tension and a surge in rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Russian and American officials, however, denied the idea of a new Cold War. Putin publicly opposed plans for the U.S. missile shield in Europe and presented President George W. Bush with a counterproposal on 7 June 2007 which was declined. Russia suspended its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty on 11 December 2007.

Putin opposed Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, warning that it would destabilize the whole system of international relations. He described the recognition of Kosovo's independence by several major world powers as "a terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over decades, but over centuries", and that "they have not thought through the results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the second end will come back and hit them in the face". In March 2014, Putin used Kosovo's declaration of independence as a justification for recognizing the independence of Crimea, citing the so-called "Kosovo independence precedent".

After the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. in 2001, Putin had good relations with American President George W. Bush, and many western European leaders. His "cooler" and "more business-like" relationship with German chancellor, Angela Merkel is often attributed to Merkel's upbringing in the former DDR, where Putin was stationed as a KGB agent. He had a very friendly and warm relationship with the former Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi; the two leaders often described their relationship as a close friendship, continuing to organize bilateral meetings even after Berlusconi's resignation in November 2011.

The NATO-led military intervention in Libya in 2011 prompted a widespread wave of criticism from several world leaders, including Putin, who said that the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 is "defective and flawed", adding: "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades."

In late 2013, Russian-American relations deteriorated further when the United States canceled a summit for the first time since 1960 after Putin gave asylum to American Edward Snowden, who had leaked massive amounts of classified information from the NSA. In 2014, Russia was suspended from the G8 group as a result of its annexation of Crimea. Putin gave a speech highly critical of the United States, accusing them of destabalizing world order and trying to "reshape the world" to its own benefit. In June 2015, Putin said that Russia has no intention of attacking NATO.

On 9 November 2016, Putin congratulated Donald Trump on becoming the 45th president of the United States. In December 2016, US intelligence officials (headed by James Clapper) quoted by CBS News stated that Putin approved the email hacking and cyber attacks during the U.S. election, against the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. A spokesman for Putin denied the reports. Putin has repeatedly accused Hillary Clinton, who served as U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, of interfering in Russia's internal affairs, and in December 2016, Clinton accused Putin of having a personal grudge against her.

With the election of Trump, Putin's favorability in the U.S. increased. A Gallup poll in February 2017 revealed a positive view of Putin among 22% of Americans, the highest since 2003. Putin has stated that U.S.–Russian relations, already at the lowest level since the end of the Cold War, have continued to deteriorate after Trump took office in January 2017.

On 18 June 2020, The National Interest published a nine thousand word essay by Putin, titled "The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II". In the essay, Putin criticizes the Western historical view of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as the start of World War II, stating that the Munich Agreement was the beginning.

United Kingdom

In 2003, relations between Russia and the United Kingdom deteriorated when the United Kingdom granted political asylum to Putin's former patron, oligarch Boris Berezovsky. This deterioration was intensified by allegations that the British were spying and making secret payments to pro-democracy and human rights groups. A survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2022 found Putin to be among the least popular foreign leaders, with 8% of British respondents holding a positive opinion.

Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

The end of 2006 brought more strained relations in the wake of the death by polonium poisoning in London of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who became an MI6 agent in 2003. In 2007, the crisis in relations continued with expulsion of four Russian envoys over Russia's refusal to extradite former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi to face charges in the murder of Litvinenko. Mirroring the British actions, Russia expelled UK diplomats and took other retaliatory steps.

In 2015–2016, the British Government conducted an inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko. Its report states, "The FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin." The report outlined some possible motives for the murder, including Litvinenko's public statements and books about the alleged involvement of the FSB in mass murder, and what was "undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism" between Putin and Litvinenko, led to the murder.

Poisoning of Sergei Skripal

On 4 March 2018, former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury. Ten days later, the British government formally accused the Russian state of attempted murder, a charge which Russia denied. After the UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats (an action which would later be responded to with a Russian expulsion of 23 British diplomats), British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on 16 March that it was "overwhelmingly likely" Putin had personally ordered the poisoning of Skripal. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the allegation "shocking and unpardonable diplomatic misconduct".

Latin America

Putin and his successor, Medvedev, enjoyed warm relations with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Much of this has been through the sale of military equipment; since 2005, Venezuela has purchased more than $4 billion worth of arms from Russia. In September 2008, Russia sent Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela to carry out training flights. In November 2008, both countries held a joint naval exercise in the Caribbean. Earlier in 2000, Putin had re-established stronger ties with Fidel Castro's Cuba.

“You express the best masculine qualities,” Putin told Jair Bolsonaro in 2020. “You look for solutions in all matters, always putting above all the interests of your people, your country, leaving out your own personal issues.” Political scientist Oliver Stuenkel noted, “Among Brazil's right-wing populists, Putin is seen as someone who is anti-woke, and that is seen as something that is definitely appealing to Bolsonaro. He is a strongman, and that is very inspiring to Bolsonaro. He would like to be someone who concentrates as much power.”

Australia and the South Pacific

In September 2007, Putin visited Indonesia and in doing so became the first Russian leader to visit the country in more than 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. South Pacific Nations condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the invasion was "unprovoked, unjust and illegal" and labeled Putin a "thug".

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denounced Putin as a "bully". Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama tweeted "Fiji and our fellow Pacific Island Countries have united as nations of peace-loving people to condemn the conflict in Ukraine", while the Solomon Islands called Putin's war a "violation of the rule of law".

Middle East and North Africa

On 16 October 2007, Putin visited Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit in Tehran, where he met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This was the first visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to Iran since Joseph Stalin's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943, and marked a significant event in Iran-Russia relations. At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our (Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions".

Putin was quoted as describing Iran as a "partner", though he expressed concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme.

In April 2008, Putin became the first Russian president who visited Libya. Putin condemned the foreign military intervention of Libya, he called UN resolution as "defective and flawed," and added "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades." Upon the death of Muammar Gaddafi, Putin called it as "planned murder" by the US, saying: "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was killed," and "There was blood all over. Is that what they call a democracy?"

From 2000 to 2010, Russia sold around $1.5 billion worth of arms to Syria, making Damascus Moscow's seventh-largest client. During the Syrian civil war, Russia threatened to veto any sanctions against the Syrian government, and continued to supply arms to its regime.

Putin opposed any foreign intervention. In June 2012, in Paris, he rejected the statement of French president François Hollande who called on Bashar Al-Assad to step down. Putin echoed Assad's argument that anti-regime militants were responsible for much of the bloodshed. He also talked about previous NATO interventions and their results, and asked "What is happening in Libya, in Iraq? Did they become safer? Where are they heading? Nobody has an answer".

On 11 September 2013, The New York Times published an op-ed by Putin urging caution against US intervention in Syria and criticizing American exceptionalism. Putin subsequently helped to arrange for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. In 2015, he took a stronger pro-Assad stance and mobilized military support for the regime. Some analysts have summarized Putin as being allied with Shiites and Alawites in the Middle East.

In October 2019, Putin visited the United Arab Emirates, where six agreements were struck with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. One of them included shared investments between Russian sovereign wealth fund and the Emirati investment fund Mubadala. The two nations signed deals worth over $1.3bn, in energy, health and advance technology sectors.

On 22 October 2021, Putin highlighted the "unique bond" between Russia and Israel during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Public image

Polls and rankings

The director of the Levada Center, Denis Volkov, stated in 2015 that drawing any conclusions from Russian poll results or comparing them to polls in democratic states was pointless as there is no real political competition in Russia, where, unlike in democratic states, Russian voters are not offered any "credible alternatives" and public opinion is primarily formed by state-controlled media which promotes those in power and discredits any alternative candidates.

In a June 2007 public opinion survey, Putin's approval rating was 81%, the second-highest of any leader in the world that year. In January 2013, at the time of the 2011–2013 Russian protests, Putin's approval rating fell to 62%, the lowest figure since 2000 and a ten-point drop over two years.

In May 2014, Putin's approval rating hit 83%, its highest since 2008. After EU and U.S. sanctions against Russian officials as a result of the crisis in Ukraine, Putin's approval rating reached 87%, in a survey published on 6 August 2014. In February 2015, based on new domestic polling, Putin was ranked the world's most popular politician. In June 2015, Putin's approval rating climbed to 89%, an all-time high. In 2016, his approval rating was 81%.

Observers saw Putin's high approval ratings in 2010's as a consequence of significant improvements in living standards, and Russia's reassertion of itself on the world scene during his presidency.

Despite high approval for Putin, public confidence in the Russian economy was low, dropping to levels in 2016 that rivaled the recent lows in 2009 at the height of the global economic crisis. Just 14% of Russians in 2016 said their national economy was getting better, and 18% said this about their local economies.

Putin's performance in reining in corruption is unpopular among Russians. Newsweek reported in June 2017 that "An opinion poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center indicated that 67 percent held Putin personally responsible for high-level corruption". Corruption is a significant problem in Russia.

In July 2018, Putin's approval rating fell to 63% and just 49% would vote for Putin if presidential elections were held. Levada poll results published in September 2018 showed Putin's personal trustworthiness levels at 39% (a decline from 59% in November 2017) with the main contributing factor being the presidential support of the unpopular pension reform and economic stagnation. In October 2018, two-thirds of Russians surveyed in the Levada poll agreed that "Putin bears full responsibility for the problems of the country" which has been attributed to a decline in a popular belief in "good tsar and bad boyars", a traditional attitude towards justifying failures at the top of the ruling hierarchy in Russia.

In January 2019, the percentage of Russians trusting Putin hit a then-historic minimum – 33.4%. It declined to 31.7% in May 2019. This finding led to a dispute between the VCIOM and President's administration office, who accused it of incorrectly using an open question, after which VCIOM repeated the poll with a closed question getting 72.3%. Nonetheless, in April 2019 Gallup poll showed a record number of Russians (20%) willing to permanently emigrate from Russia.

The decline is even larger in the 17–25 age group, "who find themselves largely disconnected from the country's aging leadership, nostalgic Soviet rhetoric and nepotistic agenda", according to a report prepared by Vladimir Milov. Putin's approval rating among young Russians was 32% in January 2019. The percentage of people willing to emigrate permanently in this age group was 41%. 60% had favorable views of the United States (three times more than in the 55+ age group). Decline in support for the president and the government is visible in other polls, such as a rapidly growing readiness to protest against poor living conditions.

In May 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis, Putin's approval rating was 67.9%, measured by VCIOM when respondents were presented a list of names (closed question), and 27% when respondents were expected to name politicians they trust (open question). In a closed-question survey conducted by the Levada Center, Putin's approval rating was 59%. This has been attributed to continued post-Crimea economic stagnation but also an apathetic response to the pandemic crisis in Russia.

In another May 2021 Levada poll, 33% indicated Putin in response to "who would you vote for this weekend?" among Moscow respondents and 40% outside of Moscow. The Levada Center survey released in October 2021 found 53% of respondents saying they trusted Putin.

Some observers noted what they described as a "generational struggle" among Russians over perception of Putin's rule, with younger Russians more likely to be against Putin and his policies and older Russians more likely to accept the narrative presented by state-controlled media in Russia. Putin’s support among Russians aged 18–24 was only 20% in December 2020.

Polls conducted in November 2021 oin the wake of the failure of a Russian COVID-19 vaccination campaign indicated that distrust of Putin personally is one of the major contributing factors for vaccine hesitancy among citizens, with regional polls indicating numbers as low as 20–30% in the Volga Federal District.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, state-controlled television channels, which most Russians get their news from, presented the invasion as a "special military operation" and a liberation mission in line with the government's narrative. The Russian censorship apparatus Roskomnadzor ordered the country's media to employ information only from Russian state sources or face fines and blocks. The Russian media was banned from using the words "war", "invasion" or "aggression" to describe the "special military operation", with various media outlets being blocked as a result.

On 26-28 February 2022, a survey conducted by the independent research group Russian Field found that 58.8% of respondents supported the "special military operation" in Ukraine. According to the poll, in the group of 18-to-24-year-olds, only 29% supported the "special military operation". In late February and mid-March 2022 with an interval of one and a half weeks, two polls conducted by a group of independent Russian sociologists surveyed Russians’ sentiments about the "special military operation" in Ukraine. The results of the poll were obtained by Radio Liberty. Almost three-quarters (71%) of Russians polled declared that they supported the "special military operation" in Ukraine.

When asked how they were affected by the actions of Putin, a third of respondents said they strongly believed that Putin was working in their interests. Another 26 percent said that he was working in their interests to some extent. In general, most Russians believe that it would be better if Putin remained president for as long as possible. Similarly, a telephone survey conducted by independent researchers from 28 February to 1 March found that 58% of Russian respondents approved of the military operation.

A poll by the Levada Center published on 30 March saw Putin's approval rating jump from 71% in February to 83% in March. However, experts warned that the figures may not accurately reflect the public mood, as the public tends to rally around leaders during war and some may be hiding their true opinions, especially with enhanced censorship and a new "false information" law prohibiting the dissemination of "fake information" about the military. Many respondents do not want to answer pollsters' questions for fear of negative consequences. When a group of researchers commissioned a survey on Russians' attitudes to the war in Ukraine, 29,400 of the 31,000 people they called refused to answer when they heard the question. The Levada Center's director, Denis Volkov, stated that early feelings of "shock and confusion" was being replaced with the belief that Russia was being besieged and that Russians must rally around their leader.

Assessments

Assessments of Putin's character as a leader have evolved during his long reign. His shifting of Russia towards autocracy and weakening of the system of representative government advocated by Boris Yeltsin has met with criticism. Russian dissidents and world leaders now frequently characterise him as a "dictator". Others have offered favourable assessments of his impact on Russia.

Putin was described in 2015 as a "dictator" by political opponent Garry Kasparov, and as the "Tsar of corruption" in 2016 by opposition activist and blogger Alexei Navalny. He was described as a "bully" and "arrogant" by former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and as "self-centered" by the Dalai Lama. Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote in 2014 that the West has demonized Putin. Egon Krenz, former leader of East Germany, said the Cold War never ended, adding: "After weak presidents like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, it is a great fortune for Russia that it has Putin."

Many Russians credit Putin for reviving Russia's fortunes. Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, while acknowledging the flawed democratic procedures and restrictions on media freedom during the Putin presidency, said that Putin had pulled Russia out of chaos at the end of the Yeltsin years, and that Russians "must remember that Putin saved Russia from the beginning of a collapse." In 2015, opposition politician Boris Nemtsov said that Putin was turning Russia into a "raw materials colony" of China. Chechen Republic head and Putin supporter, Ramzan Kadyrov, states that Putin saved both the Chechen people and Russia.

Russia has suffered democratic backsliding during Putin's tenure. Freedom House has listed Russia as being "not free" since 2005. Experts do not generally consider Russia to be a democracy, citing purges and jailing of political opponents, curtailed press freedom, and the lack of free and fair elections. In 2004, Freedom House warned that Russia's "retreat from freedom marks a low point not registered since 1989, when the country was part of the Soviet Union."

The Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Russia as "authoritarian" since 2011, whereas it had previously been considered a "hybrid regime" (with "some form of democratic government" in place). According to political scientist Larry Diamond, writing in 2015, "no serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy".

Following the jailing of the anti-corruption blogger and activist Alexei Navalny in 2018, Forbes wrote: "Putin’s actions are those of a dictator... As a leader with failing public support, he can only remain in power by using force and repression that gets worse by the day." In November 2021, The Economist also noted that Putin had "shifted from autocracy to dictatorship".

Following mounting civilian casualties during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, US president Joe Biden called Putin a war criminal and "murderous dictator". In the 2022 State of the Union Address, Biden said that Putin had "badly miscalculated". The Ukrainian envoy to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya likened Putin to Adolf Hitler. Latvian prime minister Krisjanis Karins also likened the Russian leader to Hitler, saying he was "a deluded autocrat creating misery for millions" and that "Putin is fighting against democracy (...) If he can attack Ukraine, theoretically it could be any other European country".

Lithuania’s foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said "“The battle for Ukraine is a battle for Europe. If Putin is not stopped there, he will go further.” President Macron of France said Putin was "deluding himself". French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced him as a "a cynic and a dictator". UK prime minister Boris Johnson also labelled Putin a "dictator" who had authorised “a tidal wave of violence against a fellow Slavic people".

Cult of personality

Putin has cultivated a cult of personality for himself with an outdoorsy, sporty, tough guy public image, demonstrating his physical prowess and taking part in unusual or dangerous acts, such as extreme sports and interaction with wild animals, part of a public relations approach that, according to Wired, "deliberately cultivates the macho, take-charge superhero image". In 2007, the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published a huge photograph of a shirtless Putin vacationing in the Siberian mountains under the headline "Be Like Putin".

Numerous Kremlinologists have accused Putin of seeking to create a cult of personality around himself, an accusation that the Kremlin has denied. Some of Putin's activities have been criticised for being staged; outside of Russia, his macho image has been the subject of parody. Putin is believed to be self-conscious about his height, which has been estimated by Kremlin insiders at between 155 and 165 centimetres (5 feet 1 inch and 5 feet 5 inches) tall but is usually given at 170 centimetres (5 feet 7 inches).

There are many songs about Putin, and Putin's name and image are widely used in advertisement and product branding. Among the Putin-branded products are Putinka vodka, the PuTin brand of canned food, the Gorbusha Putina caviar, and a collection of T-shirts with his image. In 2015, his advisor Mikhail Lesin was found dead after "days of excessive consumption of alcohol", though his death was later ruled as the result of an accident.

Publication recognition in the United States

In 2007, he was the Time Person of the Year. In 2015, he was No. 1 on the Time's Most Influential People List. Forbes ranked him the World's Most Powerful Individual every year from 2013 to 2016. He was ranked the second most powerful individual by Forbes in 2018.

Putinisms

Putin has produced many aphorisms and catch-phrases known as putinisms. Many of them were first made during his annual Q&A conferences, where Putin answered questions from journalists and other people in the studio, as well as from Russians throughout the country, who either phoned in or spoke from studios and outdoor sites across Russia. Putin is known for his often tough and sharp language, often alluding to Russian jokes and folk sayings.

Putin sometimes uses Russian criminal jargon (known as "fenya" in Russian), albeit not always correctly.

Electoral history

Personal life

Family

On 28 July 1983, Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva, and they lived together in East Germany from 1985 to 1990. They have two daughters, Mariya Putina, born 28 April 1985 in Leningrad, and Yekaterina Putina, born 31 August 1986 in Dresden, East Germany. An investigation by Proekt published in November 2020 alleged that Putin has another daughter, Elizaveta, also known as Luiza Rozova, (born March 2003), with Svetlana Krivonogikh.

In April 2008, the Moskovsky Korrespondent reported that Putin had divorced Lyudmila and was engaged to marry Olympic gold medalist Alina Kabaeva, a former rhythmic gymnast and Russian politician. The story was denied, and the newspaper was shut down shortly thereafter. Putin and Lyudmila continued to make public appearances together as spouses, while the status of his relationship with Kabaeva became a topic of speculation.

On 6 June 2013, Putin and Lyudmila announced that their marriage was over; on 1 April 2014, the Kremlin confirmed that the divorce had been finalised. Kabaeva reportedly gave birth to children by Putin in 2015 and 2019. These reports were denied. These births were reported to be of a daughter and twin sons respectively, but in 2022, Swiss media, citing the couple's Swiss gynecologist, wrote that on both occasions Kabaeva gave birth to a boy.

Putin has two grandsons, born in 2012 and 2017. His cousin, Igor Putin, was a director at Moscow-based Master Bank and was accused in a number of money-laundering scandals.

Personal wealth

Official figures released during the legislative election of 2007 put Putin's wealth at approximately 3.7 million rubles (US$280,000) in bank accounts, a private 77.4-square-meter (833 sq ft) apartment in Saint Petersburg, and miscellaneous other assets. Putin's reported 2006 income totaled 2 million rubles (approximately $152,000). In 2012, Putin reported an income of 3.6 million rubles ($270,000). Putin has been photographed wearing a number of expensive wristwatches, collectively valued at $700,000, nearly six times his annual salary. Putin has been known on occasion to give watches valued at thousands of dollars as gifts, for example a watch identified as a Blancpain to a Siberian boy he met while on vacation in 2009, and another similar watch to a factory worker the same year.

According to Russian opposition politicians and journalists, Putin secretly possesses a multi-billion-dollar fortune via successive ownership of stakes in a number of Russian companies. According to one editorial in The Washington Post, "Putin might not technically own these 43 aircraft, but, as the sole political power in Russia, he can act like they're his". An RIA Novosti journalist argued that " intelligence agencies ... could not find anything". These contradictory claims were analyzed by Polygraph.info, which looked at a number of reports by Western (Anders Åslund estimate of $100–160 billion) and Russian (Stanislav Belkovsky estimated of $40 billion) analysts, CIA (estimate of $40 billion in 2007) as well as counterarguments of Russian media. Polygraph concluded:

There is uncertainty on the precise sum of Putin's wealth, and the assessment by the Director of U.S. National Intelligence apparently is not yet complete. However, with the pile of evidence and documents in the Panama Papers and in the hands of independent investigators such as those cited by Dawisha, Polygraph.info finds that Danilov's claim that Western intelligence agencies have not been able to find evidence of Putin's wealth to be misleading

— Polygraph.info, "Are 'Putin's Billions' a Myth?"

In April 2016, 11 million documents belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The name of Putin does not appear in any of the records, and Putin denied his involvement with the company. However, various media have reported on three of Putin's associates on the list. According to the Panama Papers leak, close trusted associates of Putin own offshore companies worth US$2 billion in total. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung regards the possibility of Putin's family profiting from this money as plausible.

According to the paper, the US$2 billion had been "secretly shuffled through banks and shadow companies linked to Putin's associates", such as construction billionaires Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, and Bank Rossiya, previously identified by the U.S. State Department as being treated by Putin as his personal bank account, had been central in facilitating this. It concludes that "Putin has shown he is willing to take aggressive steps to maintain secrecy and protect communal assets."

A significant proportion of the money trail leads to Putin's best friend Sergei Roldugin. Although a musician, and in his own words, not a businessman, it appears he has accumulated assets valued at $100m, and possibly more. It has been suggested he was picked for the role because of his low profile. There have been speculations that Putin, in fact, owns the funds, and Roldugin just acted as a proxy. Garry Kasparov said that " controls enough money, probably more than any other individual in the history of human race".

Residences

Official government residences

As president and prime minister, Putin has lived in numerous official residences throughout the country. These residences include: the Moscow Kremlin, Novo-Ogaryovo in Moscow Oblast, Gorki-9 near Moscow, Bocharov Ruchey in Sochi, Dolgiye Borody in Novgorod Oblast, and Riviera in Sochi.

In August 2012, critics of Putin listed the ownership of 20 villas and palaces, nine of which were built during Putin's 12 years in power.

Personal residences

Soon after Putin returned from his KGB service in Dresden, East Germany, he built a dacha in Solovyovka on the eastern shore of Lake Komsomolskoye on the Karelian Isthmus in Priozersky District of Leningrad Oblast, near St. Petersburg. After the dacha burned down in 1996, Putin built a new one identical to the original and was joined by a group of seven friends who built dachas nearby. In 1996, the group formally registered their fraternity as a co-operative society, calling it Ozero ("Lake") and turning it into a gated community.

A massive Italianate-style mansion costing an alleged US$1 billion and dubbed "Putin's Palace" is under construction near the Black Sea village of Praskoveevka. In 2012, Sergei Kolesnikov, a former business associate of Putin's, told the BBC's Newsnight programme that he had been ordered by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to oversee the building of the palace. He also said that the mansion, built on government land and sporting three helipads, plus a private road paid for from state funds and guarded by officials wearing uniforms of the official Kremlin guard service, have been built for Putin's private use. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Kolesnikov's allegations against Putin as untrue, saying that "Putin has never had any relationship to this palace."

On 19 January 2021, two days after Alexei Navalny was detained by Russian authorities upon his return to Russia, a video investigation by him and the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was published accusing Putin of using fraudulently obtained funds to build the estate for himself in what he called "the world's biggest bribe." In the investigation, Navalny said that the estate is 39 times the size of Monaco and cost over 100 billion rubles ($1.35 billion) to construct. It also showed aerial footage of the estate via a drone and a detailed floorplan of the palace that Navalny said was given by a contractor, which he compared to photographs from inside the palace that were leaked onto the Internet in 2011. He also detailed an elaborate corruption scheme allegedly involving Putin's inner circle that allowed Putin to hide billions of dollars to build the estate.

Pets

Putin has received five dogs from various nation leaders: Konni, Buffy, Yume, Verni and Pasha. Konni died in 2014. When Putin first became president, the family had two poodles, Tosya and Rodeo. They reportedly stayed with his ex-wife Lyudmila after their divorce.

Religion

Putin is Russian Orthodox. His mother was a devoted Christian believer who attended the Russian Orthodox Church, while his father was an atheist. Though his mother kept no icons at home, she attended church regularly, despite government persecution of her religion at that time. His mother secretly baptized him as a baby, and she regularly took him to services.

According to Putin, his religious awakening began after a serious car crash involving his wife in 1993, and a life-threatening fire that burned down their dacha in August 1996. Shortly before an official visit to Israel, Putin's mother gave him his baptismal cross, telling him to get it blessed. Putin states, "I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since."

When asked in 2007 whether he believes in God, he responded: "There are things I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease." Putin's rumoured confessor is Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov. The sincerity of his Christianity has been rejected by his former advisor Sergei Pugachev.

Sports

Putin watches football and supports FC Zenit Saint Petersburg. He also displays an interest in ice hockey and bandy, and played in a star-studded hockey game on his 63rd birthday.

Putin has been practicing judo since he was 11 years old, before switching to sambo at the age of fourteen. He won competitions in both sports in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). He was awarded eighth dan of the black belt in 2012, becoming the first Russian to achieve the status. Putin also practises karate.

He co-authored a book entitled Judo with Vladimir Putin in Russian, and Judo: History, Theory, Practice in English (2004). Benjamin Wittes, a black belt in taekwondo and aikido and editor of Lawfare, has disputed Putin's martial arts skills, stating that there is no video evidence of Putin displaying any real noteworthy judo skills.

Health

Putin has reportedly been receiving treatment for thyroid cancer from 2016 and is rumored to take deer antler blood baths. It has also been suggested, based on video footage, that Putin may have Parkinson's disease, or back problems. The White House and other observers questioned Putin's mental health after two years of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of these claims are speculative, and made by laypersons (i.e. non-medical professionals) outside of Russia. These rumors have spread in part due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which many saw as an irrational act. Claims of ill health have been disputed by the Kremlin as well as outside medical professionals, who stress that it is impossible to study brain disease or mental illness based on video clips alone.

Honours

Civilian awards presented by different countries

Date	Country	Decoration		Presenter	Notes
7 March 2001	Vietnam		Order of Ho Chi Minh	President Trần Đức Lương	Vietnam's second-highest distinction
6 January 2004	Kazakhstan		Order of the Golden Eagle	President Nursultan Nazarbayev	Kazakhstan's highest distinction
22 September 2006	France		Légion d'honneur, Grand-Croix	President Jacques Chirac	Grand-Croix (Grand Cross) rank is the highest French decoration
6 October 2007	Tajikistan		Order of Ismoili Somoni	President Emomali Rahmon	Tajikistan's highest distinction
12 February 2007	Saudi Arabia		Order of Abdulaziz al Saud	King Abdullah	Saudi Arabia's highest civilian award
10 September 2007	UAE		Order of Zayed	Sheikh Khalifa	UAE's highest civil decoration
2 April 2010	Venezuela		Order of the Liberator	President Hugo Chávez	Venezuela's highest distinction
4 October 2013	Monaco		Order of Saint-Charles	Prince Albert	Monaco's highest decoration
11 July 2014	Cuba		Order of José Martí	President Raúl Castro	Cuba's highest decoration
16 October 2014	Serbia		Order of the Republic of Serbia	President Tomislav Nikolić	Grand Collar, Serbia's highest award
3 October 2017	Turkmenistan		Order "For contribution to the development of cooperation"	President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow
22 November 2017	Kyrgyzstan		Order of Manas	President Almazbek Atambayev
8 June 2018	China		Order of Friendship	President Xi Jinping	People's Republic of China's highest order of honour
28 May 2019	Kazakhstan		Order of Nazarbayev	Elbasy Nursultan Nazarbayev

Honorary doctorates

Other awards

Recognition

See also

• Ivan Ilyin
• Aleksandr Dugin

Notes

1. The Putins officially announced their separation in 2013 and the Kremlin confirmed the divorce had been finalized in 2014; however, it has been alleged that Putin and Lyudmila divorced in 2008.
2. Putin has two daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila. He is also alleged to have a third daughter with Svetlana Krivonogikh, and a fourth daughter and twin sons with Alina Kabaeva, although these reports have not been officially confirmed.
3. Putin took office as Prime Minister in August 1999 and became Acting President while remaining Prime Minister on 31 December 1999; he later took office as President on 7 May 2000, following his election in March.
4. Template:Lang-ru.

References

1. "Vladimir Putin quits as head of Russia's ruling party". 24 April 2012. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
2. ^ "Putin Romance Rumors Keep Public Riveted". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 18 April 2008. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
3. ^ Herszenhorn, David M. (5 May 2012). Written at Moscow. "In the Spotlight of Power, Putin Keeps His Private Life Veiled in Shadows". The New York Times. New York City. Archived from the original on 13 September 2017. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
4. ^ Zakharov, Andrey; Badanin, Roman; Rubin, Mikhail (25 November 2020). "An investigation into how a close acquaintance of Vladimir Putin attained a piece of Russia". maski-proekt.media. Proekt. Archived from the original on 25 November 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
5. ^ Ralph, Pat; Cranley, Ellen (7 December 2018). "Putin has 2, maybe 3, daughters he never talks about – here's everything we know about them". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 24 May 2020. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
6. ^ Campbell, Matthew (26 May 2019). "Kremlin silent on reports Vladimir Putin and Alina Kabaeva, his 'secret first lady', have had twins". The Times. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
7. "Timeline: Vladimir Putin – 20 tumultuous years as Russian President or PM". Reuters. 9 August 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2021.
8. Odynova, Alexandra (5 April 2021). "Putin signs law allowing him to serve 2 more terms as Russia's president". CBS News.
9. "Putin — already Russia's longest leader since Stalin — signs law that may let him stay in power until 2036". USA Today.
10. "Pessimistic Outlook in Russia Slows Investment, and the Economy". The New York Times. 18 February 2020.
11. ^ Putin: Russia's Choice, (Routledge 2007), by Richard Sakwa, Chapter 9.
12. ^ Judah, Ben, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin, Yale University Press, 2013, p. 17
13. "Fighting in volatile Chechnya kills 13 rebels, police: agency". Reuters. 24 January 2013.
14. "Putin Warns 'Mistakes' Could Bring Back '90s Woes". rferl.org. 17 October 2011.
15. "It's Official: Sanctioned Russia Now Recession Free". Forbes. 3 April 2017.
16. "Russia carries out first air strikes in Syria". Al Jazeera. 30 September 2015. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
17. "Putin's Case for War, Annotated". The New York Times. 24 February 2022.
18. ^ "Everything you need to know about war crimes and how Putin could be prosecuted". CNN. Retrieved 26 March 2022.
19. ^ Gill, Graeme (2016). Building an Authoritarian Polity: Russia in Post-Soviet Times (hardback ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-13008-1.
20. ^ Reuter, Ora John (2017). The Origins of Dominant Parties: Building Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Soviet Russia (E-book ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316761649. ISBN 978-1-316-76164-9.
21. Frye, Timothy (2021). Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia. Princeton University Press. p. . ISBN 978-0-691-21246-3.
22. ^ Rosenberg, Matt (12 August 2016). "When Was St. Petersburg Known as Petrograd and Leningrad?". About.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
23. "Prime Minister of the Russian Federation – Biography". 14 May 2010. Archived from the original on 14 May 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
24. "Putin says grandfather cooked for Stalin and Lenin". Reuters. 11 March 2018. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
25. Sebestyen, Victor (2018), Lenin the Dictator, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 422, ISBN 978-1-4746-0105-4
26. Barry, Ellen (27 January 2012). "At Event, a Rare Look at Putin's Life". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 6 August 2021. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
27. Pasha-Robinson, Lucy (9 October 2016). "Putin's brother died in Siege of Leningrad, which bears striking resemblance to Syrian crisis". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 27 March 2022. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
28. Vladimir Putin; Nataliya Gevorkyan; Natalya Timakova; Andrei Kolesnikov (2000). First Person. trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. PublicAffairs. p. 208. ISBN 978-1-58648-018-9.
29. First Person An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin The New York Times, 2000.
30. Putin's Obscure Path From KGB to Kremlin Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times, 19 March 2000.
31. ^ (Sakwa 2008, p. 3)
32. Sakwa, Richard. Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (2014), p. 2.
33. "Prime Minister". Russia.rin.ru. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
34. Truscott, Peter (2005). Putin's Progress: A Biography of Russia's Enigmatic President, Vladimir Putin. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-7434-9607-0. Retrieved 25 February 2022 – via Google Books.
35. "In Tel Aviv, Putin's German Teacher Recalls 'Disciplined' Student". Haaretz. 26 March 2014. Archived from the original on 19 November 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
36. ^ Hoffman, David (30 January 2000). "Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB". The Washington Post.
37. Lynch, Allen. Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft, p. 15 (Potomac Books 2011).
38. Владимир Путин. От Первого Лица. Chapter 6 Archived 30 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine
39. ^ Pribylovsky, Vladimir (2010). "Valdimir Putin" (PDF). Власть–2010 (60 биографий) (in Russian). Moscow: Panorama. pp. 132–139. ISBN 978-5-94420-038-9.
40. "Vladimir Putin as a Spy Working Undercover from 1983". 30 June 1983. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2017 – via YouTube.
41. (Sakwa 2008, pp. 8–9)
42. ^ Hoffman, David (30 January 2000). "Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
43. Chris Hutchins (2012). Putin. Troubador Publishing Ltd. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-78088-114-0. But these were the honeymoon days and she was already expecting their first child when he was sent to Moscow for further training at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute in September 1984 ... At Red Banner, students were given a nom de guerre beginning with the same letter as their surname. Thus Comrade Putin became Comrade Platov.
44. Andrew Jack (2005). Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform without Democracy?. Oxford University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-19-029336-9. He returned to work in Leningrad's First Department for intelligence for four and a half years, and then attended the elite Andropov Red Banner Institute for intelligence training before his posting to the German Democratic Republic in 1985.
45. Vladimir Putin; Nataliya Gevorkyan; Natalya Timakova; Andrei Kolesnikov (2000). First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Public Affairs. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-7867-2327-0. I worked there for about four and a half years, and then I went to Moscow for training at the Andropov Red Banner Institute, which is now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence.
46. ^ Harvey, Bob. "Metro — Putin and Me". www.metromag.co.nz. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
47. "When 'shoe salesman' Vladimir Putin visited New Zealand". RNZ. 13 March 2022. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
48. "Did Putin visit NZ for the KGB?". NZ Herald. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
49. "Putin set to visit Dresden, the place of his work as a KGB spy, to tend relations with Germany". International Herald Tribune. 9 October 2006. Archived from the original on 26 March 2009.
50. ^ Gessen, Masha (2012). The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (1st ed.). New York: Riverhead. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-59448-842-9. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
51. ^ Belton, Catherine (2020). "Did Vladimir Putin Support Anti-Western Terrorists as a Young KGB Officer?". Politico. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
52. "Vladimir Putin, The Imperialist". Time. 10 December 2014. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
53. ^ Sakwa, Richard (2007). Putin : Russia's Choice (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-415-40765-6. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
54. (Sakwa 2008, pp. 10–11)
55. (Sakwa 2008, p. 11)
56. Remick, David (3 August 2014). "Watching the Eclipse". The New Yorker. No. 11. Retrieved 3 August 2014.
57. Newsweek, "Russia's Mighty Mouse", 25 February 2008.
58. Stone, Oliver. "The Putin Interviews (Party 2 – 2:10)". sho.com. Showtime. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
59. "Vladimir Putin says he drove a taxi after fall of Soviet Union". Deutsche Welle. 12 December 2021. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
60. Roth, Andrew (13 December 2021). "Vladimir Putin says he resorted to driving a taxi after fall of Soviet Union". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
61. "Committee for External Relations of St. Petersburg". Archived from the original on 21 February 2007. Retrieved 21 February 2007.
62. Kovalev, Vladimir (23 July 2004). "Uproar at Honor For Putin". The Saint Petersburg Times. Archived from the original on 20 March 2015. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
63. Belton, Catherine (19 May 2003). "Putin's Name Surfaces in German Probe". The Moscow Times. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 27 September 2007 – via www.rusnet.nl.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
64. Paton Walsh, Nick (29 February 2004). "The Man Who Wasn't There". The Observer. Retrieved 23 May 2021 – via The Guardian.
65. ^ Владимир Путин: от ассистента Собчака до и.о. премьера (in Russian). GAZETA.RU. 9 August 1999. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
66. ПУТИН – КАНДИДАТ НАУК (in Russian). zavtra.ru. 24 May 2000. Archived from the original on 6 August 2013.
67. Gustafson, Thane. Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia, p. 246 (Harvard University Press, 2012).
68. "London's Most Mysterious Mansion". The New Yorker. 23 May 2015. Retrieved 13 March 2022.
69. "Russia's plagiarism problem: Even Putin has done it!". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 13 March 2022.
70. Lourie 2017, p. 52, Ch 4. Russia's Fall, Putin's Rise.
71. The Half-Decay Products Archived 7 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian) by Oleg Odnokolenko. Itogi, #47(545), 2 January 2007.
72. Rosefielde, Steven; Hedlund, Stefan (2009). Russia Since 1980. Cambridge University Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-521-84913-5. Retrieved 21 May 2017.
73. "Text of Yeltsin's speech in English". BBC News. 9 August 1999. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2007.
74. Yeltsin redraws political map BBC. 10 August 1999.
75. "Yeltsin's man wins approval". BBC News. 16 August 1999. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
76. (Sakwa 2008, p. 20)
77. "Political groups and parties". Archived from the original on 2 July 2001. Retrieved 2 July 2001. Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt
78. "Russia: Putin Travels To Chechnya To Visit Troops". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 3 March 2000.
79. "УКАЗ от 31 декабря 1999 г. No. 1763 О ГАРАНТИЯХ ПРЕЗИДЕНТУ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ, ПРЕКРАТИВШЕМУ ИСПОЛНЕНИЕ СВОИХ ПОЛНОМОЧИЙ, И ЧЛЕНАМ ЕГО СЕМЬИ". Archived from the original on 19 February 2001. Retrieved 17 December 2007. Rossiyskaya Gazeta
80. Александр Колесниченко. ""Развращение" первого лица. Госдума не решилась покуситься на неприкосновенность экс-президента". Newizv.ru. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
81. Ignatius, Adi. Person of the Year 2007: A Tsar Is Born, Time, page 4 (19 December 2007). Retrieved 19 November 2009.
82. "ДЕЛО ПУТИНА". Novaya Gazeta. 23 March 2000. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
83. "Компромат.Ru / Compromat.Ru: Фигунанты по квартирному делу". compromat.ru. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
84. Dawisha, Karen (2015). Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-9520-1.
85. "Почему Марина Салье молчала о Путине 10 лет?". Radio Svoboda. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
86. "BBC News | EUROPE | Putin won 'rigged elections'". BBC News. 11 September 2000. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
87. Wines, Michael (27 March 2000). "ELECTION IN RUSSIA: THE OVERVIEW; Putin Wins Russia Vote in First Round, But His Majority Is Less Than Expected". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
88. "Kasyanov appointed premier in Russia". United Press International. Retrieved 19 March 2022.
89. ^ Spectre of Kursk haunts Putin. BBC News. 12 August 2001. Retrieved 30 August 2020.
90. (Sakwa 2008, pp. 143–150)
91. Playing Russian Roulette: Putin in search of good governance, by Andre Mommen, in Good Governance in the Era of Global Neoliberalism: Conflict and Depolitisation in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, by Jolle Demmers, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto, Barbara Hogenboom (Routledge, 2004).
92. Wyatt, Caroline (16 December 2002). Moscow siege leaves dark memories. BBC News. Retrieved 30 August 2020.
93. "Chechnya profile". BBC News. 17 January 2018. Retrieved 30 August 2020.
94. "Can Grozny be groovy?". The Independent. London. 6 March 2007. Archived from the original on 28 March 2007.
95. "Human Rights Watch Reports, on human rights abuses in Chechnya". Human Rights Watch. Archived from the original on 21 November 2006. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
96. "The World Factbook". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 30 August 2020.
97. Birch, Douglas (10 May 2005). "World leaders unite as Russia proudly marks V-E Day". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
98. Mydans, Seth (15 March 2004). "As Expected, Putin Easily Wins a Second Term in Russia (Published 2004)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
99. "Putin meets angry Beslan mothers". BBC News. 2 September 2005. Retrieved 23 March 2020.
100. "On this Day December 25: Gorbachev resigns as Soviet Union breaks up". BBC News. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
101. "Putin deplores collapse of USSR". BBC News. 25 April 2005. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
102. Gold, Martin (16 September 2015). "Understanding the Russian Move into Ukraine". The National Law Review. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
103. Krainova, N. (5 March 2013). "Life Expectancy in Russia Is Stagnant, Study Says". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
104. "The challenges of the Medvedev era" (PDF). BOFIT Online. 24 June 2008. ISSN 1456-811X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
105. ^ "BBC Russian – Россия – Путин очертил "дорожную карту" третьего срока". BBC. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
106. Russia: Russia president Vladimir Putin rule: achievements, problems and future strategies. Washington, DC: International Business Publications. 2014. p. 70. ISBN 978-1-4330-6774-7. OCLC 956347599.
107. How to Steal Legally The Moscow Times, 15 February 2008 (issue 3843, page 8).
108. Putin's Gamble. Where Russia is headed by Nikolas Gvosdev, National Review, 5 November 2003. Archived 28 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
109. Putin's Kremlin Asserting More Control of Economy. Yukos Case Reflects Shift on Owning Assets, Notably in Energy by Peter Baker, The Washington Post, 9 July 2004.
110. "Hague court awards $50 bn compensation to Yukos shareholders". Russia Herald. Archived from the original on 30 July 2014. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
111. "Putin's Russia failed to protect this brave woman – Joan Smith". The Independent. London. 9 October 2006. Archived from the original on 7 December 2008. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
112. "Anna Politkovskaya, Prominent Russian Journalist, Putin Critic and Human Rights Activist, Murdered in Moscow". Democracy Now. 9 October 2006. Archived from the original on 10 October 2006.
113. Kolesnikov, Andrey (11 October 2006). "Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel Work Together". Kommersant. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
114. Lee, Steven (10 March 2007). "Kasparov, Building Opposition to Putin". The New York Times. Russia. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
115. "Garry Kasparov jailed over rally". BBC News. 24 November 2007. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
116. "Putin Dissolves Government, Nominates Viktor Zubkov as New Prime Minister". Fox News Channel. 12 September 2007. Archived from the original on 17 September 2012. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
117. Election Preliminary Results for United Russia, 4 December 2007, Rbc.ru
118. Russians Voted In Favour of Putin Archived 11 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, 4 December 2007, Izvestia
119. Assenters' March Archived 11 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, 3 December 2007, Izvestia
120. "Putin Is Approved as Prime Minister". The New York Times. 9 May 2008.
121. "Russia's Putin set to return as president in 2012". BBC News. 24 September 2011. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
122. Russian election protests – follow live updates, The Guardian. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
123. Как митинг на Поклонной собрал около 140 000 человек politonline.ru (in Russian)
124. Frum, David (June 2014), "What Putin Wants", The Atlantic, 313 (5): 46–48
125. Osborn, Andrew (24 September 2011). "Vladimir Putin on course to be Russia's next president as Dmitry Medvedev steps aside". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
126. Shuster, Simon (3 March 2012). "Will Putin's Election Victory in Russia Be Greeted with Protests?". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
127. "История президентских выборов в России" [History of the presidential elections in Russia]. RIA Novosti (in Russian). 9 March 2012. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
128. "Putin won 'rigged elections'". BBC News. 11 September 2000.
129. Выборы Президента Российской Федерации 2012. izbirkom.ru (in Russian). Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
130. "Putin Hails Vote Victory, Opponents Cry Foul". RIA Novosti. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
131. James Ball. "Russian election: does the data suggest Putin won through fraud?". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
132. "Russia's presidential election marked by unequal campaign conditions, active citizens' engagement, international observers say". Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
133. Elder, Miriam (17 August 2012). "Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in prison colony over anti-Putin protest". The Guardian. London.
134. Провокация вместо марша vz.ru
135. "Russian police battle anti-Putin protesters". Reuters. 6 May 2012. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
136. "СК пересчитал пострадавших полицейских во время "Марша миллионов"". lenta.ru. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
137. Parfitt, Tom (7 May 2012). "Vladimir Putin inauguration shows how popularity has crumbled". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
138. Ross, Cameron (2016). Systemic and Non-Systemic Opposition in the Russian Federation: Civil Society Awakens?. Routledge. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-317-04723-0.
139. "Putin tells stadium rally 'battle' is on for Russia". BBC News. 23 February 2012.
140. "Resolute Putin Faces a Russia That's Changed". The New York Times. 23 February 2012.
141. "Putin, Addressing Rally, Casts Himself as Unifier". The Wall Street Journal. 24 February 2012.
142. "Pro-Putin rally draws tens of thousands". Al Jazeera. 23 February 2012.
143. "Vladimir Putin inaugurated as Russian president amid Moscow protests". The Guardian. 7 May 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
144. "Putin decrees EU closeness policy". Voice of Russia, English.ruvr.ru. 7 May 2012. Archived from the original on 13 May 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
145. "Discrimination in Russia: Arrests for Violation of St. Petersburg Anti-Gay Law". Der Spiegel. 6 April 2012.
146. ""Russian parliament backs ban on "gay propaganda", Reuters, 25 January 2013". Reuters. 25 January 2013.
147. Госдума приняла закон о 'нетрадиционных отношениях' [The State Duma has adopted a law on 'non-traditional relationships']. BBC Russia (in Russian). 11 June 2013. Archived from the original on 1 March 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
148. "ГД приняла закон об усилении наказания за пропаганду гомосексуализма среди подростков". RBC. 11 June 2013. Archived from the original on 3 October 2013. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
149. Jivanda, Tomas (19 January 2014). "Vladimir Putin: 'I know some people who are gay, we're on friendly terms'". The Independent. London. Retrieved 8 February 2014.
150. Putin becomes Popular Front for Russia leader, Interfax-Ukraine (13 June 2013) Archived 15 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine
151. "Echo of Soviet era in Putin's bid for votes". The Australian. 17 June 2011.
152. "Putin inaugurates new movement amid fresh protests". BBC. 12 June 2013. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
153. "BBC Radio 4 – Analysis, Maskirovka: Deception Russian-Style". BBC. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
154. Lally, Kathy (17 April 2014). "Putin's remarks raise fears of future moves against Ukraine". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 September 2014.
155. "President of Russia". Eng.kremlin.ru. 1 June 2010. Retrieved 20 April 2014.
156. "Debaltseve pocket in Donbas was created mainly by Russian troops – Yashin". unian.info. 8 April 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
157. Per Liljas (19 August 2014). "Rebels in Besieged Ukrainian City Reportedly Being Reinforced". Time. Time. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
158. "How the war zone transformed between June 16 and Sept. 19". Kyiv Post. 25 September 2014. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
159. "Exclusive: Charred tanks in Ukraine point to Russian involvement". Reuters. 23 October 2014.
160. Channel 4 News, 2 September 2014 tensions still high in Ukraine
161. Luke Harding (17 December 2014). "Ukraine ceasefire leaves frontline counting cost of war in uneasy calm". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
162. "Kiev claims 'intensive' movements of troops crossing from Russia". Agence France-Presse. 2 November 2014. Archived from the original on 14 November 2014. Retrieved 13 November 2014.
163. various reuters (9 November 2014). "worst east Ukraine shelling for month". Reuters. Retrieved 10 November 2014. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
164. "Spot report by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM), 8 November 2014". osce.org. 8 November 2014. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
165. "Ukraine Crisis: Russian 'Cargo 200' Crossed Border – OSCE". BBC, UK. 13 November 2014. Retrieved 13 November 2014.
166. ОБСЕ заявляет, что на ростовских КПП были машины с надписью "груз 200" (in Russian). RIA Novosti. 6 August 2015. Retrieved 7 August 2015.
167. "Moscow Stifles Dissent as Soldiers Return From Ukraine in Coffins". The Moscow Times. Reuters. 12 September 2014. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
168. "Response to Special Representative in Ukraine Ambassador Martin Sajdik and OSCE Special Monitoring Mission Chief Monitor Ertugrul Apakan". U.S. Mission to the OSCE. 4 November 2015. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
169. "Russia said to redeploy special-ops forces from Ukraine to Syria". Fox News Channel. 24 October 2015. Retrieved 24 October 2015. "The special forces were pulled out of Ukraine and sent to Syria," a Russian Ministry of Defense official said, adding that they had been serving in territories in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia rebels. The official described them as "akin to a Delta Force," the U.S. Army's elite counterterrorism unit.
170. Walker, Shaun (17 December 2015). "Putin admits Russian military presence in Ukraine for first time". The Guardian.
171. Rutland, Peter (18 May 2014). "A Paradigm Shift in Russia's Foreign Policy". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 14 October 2020.
172. Zevelev, Igor (27 April 2014). "Границы русского мира" [The Borders of the Russian World]. Россия в глобальной политике (in Russian). Retrieved 14 October 2020.
173. Tsygankov, Andrei (4 July 2015). "Vladimir Putin's last stand: the sources of Russia's Ukraine policy". Post-Soviet Affairs. 31 (4): 279–303. doi:10.1080/1060586x.2015.1005903. ISSN 1060-586X. S2CID 154892438.
174. Patrick J. McDonnell; W.J. Hennigan; Nabih Bulos (30 September 2015). "Russia Launches Airstrikes in Syria Amid U.S. Concern About Targets". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
175. "Clashes between Syrian troops, insurgents intensify in Russian-backed offensive". U.S. News & World Report. 8 October 2015. Archived from the original on 9 October 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
176. Dearden, Lizzie (8 October 2015). "Syrian army general says new ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes will 'eliminate terrorists'". The Independent. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
177. "Syria conflict: Russia's Putin orders 'main part' of forces out". BBC World Service. 14 March 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
178. "Новости NEWSru.com :: Генштаб ВС РФ объявил о новых авиаударах по террористам в Сирии". 18 March 2016. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
179. "Background to 'Assessing Russian Activities in Recent US Elections': The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution". The New York Times. 6 January 2016. p. 11. Retrieved 8 January 2017. 'We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.'
180. Kiely, Eugene; Gore, D'Angelo (19 February 2018). "In His Own Words: Trump on Russian Meddling". FactCheck.org.
181. Greenberg, Don (19 February 2018). "Donald Trump falsely says he never denied Russian meddling". Politifact. Retrieved 6 April 2018.
182. Sanger, David E. (6 January 2017). "Putin Ordered 'Influence Campaign' Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says". The New York Times.
183. Filipov, David (23 December 2016). "Putin to Democratic Party: You lost, get over it". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 July 2017. Don't be sore losers. That was how Putin answered a question Friday at his nationally televised annual news conference about whether Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. The Democrats 'are losing on all fronts and looking elsewhere for things to blame,' he told the nearly 1,400 journalists packed into a Moscow convention hall for the nearly four-hour event. 'In my view, this, how shall I say it, degrades their own dignity. You have to know how to lose with dignity.'
184. Walker, Shaun (30 March 2017). "'Read my lips – no': Putin denies Russian meddling in US presidential election". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 July 2017. 'Read my lips—no,' the Russian president answered when asked whether Russia had tried to influence the vote. He emphasized the denial by saying 'no' in English.
185. "Putin says claims of Russian meddling in U.S. election are 'just some kind of hysteria'". Los Angeles Times. 2 June 2017.
186. Fahrenthold, David A. (4 June 2017). "Putin calls U.S. election-meddling charge a 'load of nonsense' in Megyn Kelly interview". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 July 2017. 'There's a theory that Kennedy's assassination was arranged by the United States intelligence services. So, if this theory is correct—and that can't be ruled out—then the same agencies could fabricate evidence of Russian hacking, Putin said.
187. "Megyn Kelly Drills Vladimir Putin on Presidential Election Hack, Russia's Ties With Trump (Video)". Yahoo News. 7 June 2017. Retrieved 8 October 2017. Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change. That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the head of the United States. We know more or less what is going to happen. And so in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere.
188. Liptak, Kevin (8 July 2017). "Trump officials decline to rebut Russia's claims that Trump seemed to accept election denials". CNN. Retrieved 21 July 2017. Top advisers to President Donald Trump declined three times on Saturday to rebut claims from Russian officials that Trump had accepted their denials of alleged Russian interference in the US election. ... Russian President Vladimir Putin ... told reporters that Trump appeared to accept his assertion that Russia did not meddle in the US presidential contest.
189. Pinchuk, Denis (1 June 2017). "Patriotic Russians may have staged cyber attacks on own initiative: Putin". Reuters. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
190. "Putin says Jews, Ukrainians, Tatars could be behind U.S. election meddling". USA Today. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
191. Sanger, David E.; Rosenberg, Matthew (18 July 2018). "From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered". The New York Times.
192. Polyakova, Alina, "The Kremlin's Plot against Democracy: How Russia Updated Its 2016 Playbook for 2020". Foreign Affairs 99#5 (2020): 140–145
193. "Muted Western reaction to Putin victory". BBC News. 19 March 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
194. "Когда будет инаугурация президента РФ?". aif.ru. 19 March 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
195. "Russia's Putin wins by big margin". BBC News. 18 March 2018. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
196. "Путин предложил кандидатуру Медведева на пост премьера". РИА Новости. 7 May 2018.
197. Открытие автодорожной части Крымского моста. Kremlin.ru (in Russian). 15 May 2018. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
198. Президент подписал указы о составе нового Правительства. Kremlin.ru (in Russian). 18 May 2018. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
199. "Putin says will step down as president after term expires in 2024". Reuters. 25 May 2018. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
200. "The Observer view on Putin's ongoing corruption of democracy". The Guardian. 8 September 2019. Retrieved 8 September 2019.
201. Soldatkin, Vladimir; Osborn, Andrew (15 January 2020). "Putin shake-up could keep him in power past 2024 as cabinet steps aside". Reuters. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
202. Ilyushina, Mary; McKenzie, Sheena (15 January 2020). "Russian government resigns as Putin proposes reforms that could extend his grip on power". CNN. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
203. Правительство России уходит в отставку. РИА Новости (in Russian). 15 January 2020. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
204. "Путин предложил Медведеву должность зампредседателя Совбеза". 15 January 2020.
205. Soldatkin, Vladimir; Marrow, Alexander (16 January 2020). Stonestreet, John (ed.). "Russian lawmakers approve Mishustin as PM". Reuters. Archived from the original on 16 January 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2020. Mishustin received 383 votes of 424 cast, with no votes against and 41 abstentions in a victory that had been all but assured when he won the unanimous backing of his party, United Russia, which has a strong majority in the chamber.
206. "Госдума одобрила Мишустина на пост премьера". iz.ru (in Russian). 16 January 2020. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
207. "Михаил Мишустин назначен Председателем Правительства Российской Федерации". Archived from the original on 16 January 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
208. "Указ о структуре федеральных органов исполнительной власти". Президент России.
209. "Подписаны указы о назначении министров Правительства Российской Федерации". Президент России.
210. "Назначены министры внутренних дел, иностранных дел, обороны, юстиции и глава МЧС России". Президент России.
211. "Кремль объяснил разницу в полномочиях Собянина и Мишустина по вирусу". РБК (in Russian). Retrieved 21 March 2020.
212. "Russian army to send coronavirus help to Italy after Putin phone call". Reuters. 22 March 2020. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
213. ""Это космос": как Путин посетил больницу в Коммунарке". Gazeta.ru. 27 March 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
214. "Песков сообщил о регулярных тестах Путина на коронавирус". Interfax (in Russian). 3 April 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
215. "Путин перешел на удаленку". Росбалт (in Russian). 3 April 2020. Retrieved 1 April 2020.
216. "Путин: дата голосования по поправкам к Конституции должна быть перенесена". TASS. 25 March 2020.
217. "Putin calls on Russians 'to stay home' due to coronavirus". TASS. 25 March 2020.
218. "Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News". The Moscow Times. 25 March 2020.
219. "Address to the Nation". President of Russia. 25 March 2020. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
220. "'They need to quarantine Moscow' How small businesses in Russia's capital are scrambling to stay afloat as coronavirus clobbers the economy". Meduza. 27 March 2020. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
221. "Bankrolling Russia's relief program Putin has proposed sweeping tax cuts to shore up vulnerable businesses as coronavirus cripples the economy, but a lot more might be needed and it's unclear who would foot the bill". Meduza. 26 March 2020. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
222. "Putin signs decree on non-working days for Russian citizens until April 30". TASS. 2 April 2020. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
223. "Putin Sets Off Meme Storm By Comparing Medieval Invaders to Coronavirus Quarantine". The Moscow Times. 8 April 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
224. "Putin's Virus Response Earns Lower Marks Than Local Leaders': Poll". The Moscow Times. 30 April 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
225. Gershkovich, Evan (14 May 2020). "As the Coronavirus Contagion Grows in Russia, Putin's Strongman Image Weakens". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
226. Galeotti, Mark (12 May 2020). "Putin Withdraws From the Coronavirus Crisis in a Political Abdication". The Moscow Times.
227. "Russia's technocrat-in-chief". Meduza. 11 October 2019.
228. Litvinova, Daria (13 August 2021). "Putin reveals he was vaccinated with Russia's Sputnik V". Associated Press. Retrieved 14 September 2021.
229. Litvinova, Daria (14 September 2021). "Putin in self-isolation due to COVID cases in inner circle". Associated Press.
230. "Putin orders constitution changes allowing him to rule until 2036". Al Jazeera. 3 July 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
231. "Anti-Putin Protests in Russia's Far East Gather Steam". Voice of America. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Russia. 25 July 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
232. Troianovski, Anton (25 July 2020). "Protests Swell in Russia's Far East in a Stark New Challenge to Putin". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
233. Odynova, Alexandra (3 August 2020). Written at Moscow. "Anti-Kremlin protests continue in Russia's far east for 24 consecutive days". New York City: CBS News. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
234. "ПРОТЕСТЫ В ХАБАРОВСКЕ". Levada Center. 28 July 2020.
235. "Putin signs bill granting lifetime immunity to former Russian presidents". The Guardian. Moscow. 22 December 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
236. "Russia's Putin signs bill giving ex-presidents lifetime immunity". Al Jazeera. 20 December 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
237. "NATO expansion in Ukraine a 'red line' for Putin, Kremlin says". The Hill. 27 September 2021.
238. "Analysis: Putin's Ukraine gambit seen as part of play for new Biden summit". Reuters. 24 November 2021.
239. "Russia–Ukraine border: Why Moscow is stoking tensions". BBC News. 27 November 2021.
240. "U.S. 'Escalating' Russia–Ukraine Tensions by Arming Kiev – Kremlin". The Moscow Times. 23 November 2021.
241. "Russia will act if Nato countries cross Ukraine 'red lines', Putin says". The Guardian. 30 November 2021.
242. "NATO Pushes Back Against Russian President Putin's 'Red Lines' Over Ukraine". The Drive. 1 December 2021.
243. "Putin warns Russia will act if NATO crosses its red lines in Ukraine". Reuters. 30 November 2021.
244. "Putin Demands NATO Guarantees Not to Expand Eastward". U.S. News & World Report. 1 December 2021.
245. "US will help to end Ukraine conflict with Russia, Biden tells Kyiv". Euronews. 10 December 2021.
246. "Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine? And other questions". BBC News. 10 December 2021.
247. Wong, Edward; Barnes, Julian (2 March 2022). "China Asked Russia to Delay Ukraine War Until After Olympics, U.S. Officials Say". The New York Times.
248. "Western-Led Pressure Grows on Pakistan to Condemn Russia's Invasion of Ukraine". VOA News. 1 March 2022.
249. "Russia spy chief says Ukraine invasion plan 'malicious' U.S. propaganda". Reuters. 27 November 2021.
250. "West voices its concern over Russia's military build-up on Ukrainian border ahead of Biden call with Putin". Sky News. 7 December 2021.
251. "Russia denies looking for pretext to invade Ukraine". Associated Press. 17 January 2022.
252. "The world is worried Putin is about to invade Ukraine". CNBC. 17 November 2021.
253. "Ukraine crisis: Russians hope for peace as the world talks of war". Al Jazeera. 27 January 2022.
254. "Russian public doesn't want war, but is anyone listening?". The Monitor. 4 February 2022.
255. "Former top Russian general warns Putin against 'criminal' Ukraine invasion". New York Post. 7 February 2022. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
256. Gregory, Paul Roderick (11 February 2022). "A retired Russian general's criticism may signal a larger problem for Putin". TheHill. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
257. "Ukraine tensions: US trying to draw Russia into war, Putin says". BBC News. 2 February 2022. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
258. "Putin Says Ready for Compromise After Talks With Macron on Ukraine". The Moscow Times. 8 February 2022.
259. "France says Putin promised no 'new military initiatives' near Ukraine in talks with Macron". ABC News. 8 February 2022.
260. "Russian Parliament Backs Plan to Recognize Breakaway Ukrainian Regions". The Moscow Times. 15 February 2022.
261. "Extracts from Putin's speech on Ukraine". Reuters. 21 February 2022.
262. "Russian President Vladimir Putin announces military assault against Ukraine in surprise speech". Msn.com. 19 April 2017. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
263. "Russia launches massive invasion of Ukraine — live updates". Deutsche Welle. 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
264. "Putin's claims that Ukraine is committing genocide are baseless, but not unprecedented". The Conversation. 25 February 2022.
265. "Full text: Putin's declaration of war on Ukraine". The Spectator. 24 February 2022.
266. "Russia's War of Self-Destruction". New York Magazine. 28 February 2022.
267. "Putin's miscalculation in Ukraine could lead to his downfall". New Statesman. 2 March 2022.
268. "Russians Fleeing As Nation Faces Economic Collapse". Forbes. 5 March 2022.
269. "Ukraine conflict: UK to impose sanctions on Russia's President Putin". BBC News. 25 February 2022.
270. "Ukraine invasion: West imposes sanctions on Russia's Putin and Lavrov". BBC News. 26 February 2022.
271. U.N. Secretary-General to Putin: In the name of humanity, stop this war; www.reuters.com; 24 February 2022
272. Biden condemns 'Russia's unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine'; edition.cnn.com; 24 February 2022.
273. EU condemns Russia's 'unjustified' attack on Ukraine; www.aa.com.tr; 24 February 2022
274. "Johnson: Putin may face war crimes charges". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
275. "Biden calls Putin a 'war criminal' after meeting with troops in Poland". ABC News. Retrieved 26 March 2022.
276. How Asia is responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine; www.japantimes.co.jp; 4 March 2022
277. ^ China called out for easing trading restrictions with Russia; news.com.au; 25 February 2022
278. ^ Russia invasion of Ukraine: NZ Parliament condemns 'bully' Putin; Luxon and Ardern face off on living costs; www.nzherald.co.nz; 1 March 2022
279. Kenya's UN ambassador slams Russia and compares Ukraine crisis to Africa's colonial past; edition.cnn.com; 23 February 2022
280. Switzerland adopts wholesale EU sanctions against Russia; www.theguardian.com; 1 March 2022
281. U.N. General Assembly in historic vote denounces Russia over Ukraine invasion; www.reuters.com; 3 March 2022
282. "Lavrov Faces Fresh Mass Diplomatic Boycott at UN Rights Council". The Moscow Times. 1 March 2022.
283. "Ukraine calls for no-fly zone to stop Russian bombardment". Reuters. 1 March 2022.
284. "Ukraine invasion: Putin puts Russia's nuclear forces on 'special alert'". BBC News. 28 February 2022.
285. "Slow Progress and Fierce Resistance in Ukraine Could Prompt Brutal Russian Offensive". The Moscow Times. 1 March 2022.
286. "Putin Signs Law Introducing Jail Terms for 'Fake News' on Army". The Moscow Times. 4 March 2022.
287. "Russia will stop 'in a moment' if Ukraine meets terms – Kremlin". Reuters. 7 March 2022. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
288. "Ukraine's Zelenskiy Says Open to 'Compromise' with Russia on Crimea, Separatist Territories". The Moscow Times. 8 March 2022.
289. "Everything you need to know about war crimes and how Putin could be prosecuted". CNN. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
290. "Russia bombards and U.S. imposes sanctions as Ukraine urges decisive help". Reuters. 6 April 2022.
291. "Retreat of Russian forces uncovers evidence of possible war crimes". El País. 3 April 2022. Archived from the original on 4 April 2022. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
292. "War Crimes Watch: Hard Path to Justice in Bucha, Ukraine, Atrocities". Frontline. Archived from the original on 7 April 2022. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
293. Harb, Ali. "Ukraine: As Russia faces 'genocide' charge, experts urge caution". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
294. "EU, US plan fresh Russia sanctions over Bucha massacre". France24. 6 April 2022.
295. "U.N. suspends Russia from human rights body, Moscow then quits". Reuters. 7 April 2022.
296. "Putin warns Russia against pro-Western 'traitors' and scum". Reuters. 16 March 2022.
297. "Putin says Russia must undergo a 'self-cleansing of society' to purge 'bastards and traitors' as thousands flee the country". Business Insider. 16 March 2022.
298. "U.N. General Assembly again overwhelmingly isolates Russia over Ukraine". Reuters. 24 March 2022.
299. "Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine ready to discuss neutrality in peace talks with Russia". Financial Times. 28 March 2022.
300. "Pentagon: "We would concur" with reports that Putin "not fully informed"". Axios. 30 March 2022.
301. "'Misinformed' Putin in 'Self-Inflicted Bubble': Ex-Russian Energy Official". Newsweek. 2 April 2022.
302. World Freedom Foundation (2015). Vladimir Putin – Direct Speech Without Cuts. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-329-39092-8.
303. White, Stephen (2010). "Classifying Russia's Politics". In White, Stephen (ed.). Developments in Russian Politics 7. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-22449-0.
304. (Sakwa 2008, pp. 42–43)
305. Okara, Andrei (July–September 2007). "Sovereign Democracy: A New Russian Idea Or a PR Project?" (PDF). Russia in Global Affairs. 5 (3). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 April 2016.
306. Petrov, Nikolai (December 2005). "From Managed Democracy to Sovereign Democracy" (PDF). Center for Political-Geographic Research.
307. Surkov, Vladislav (7 February 2006). "Sovereignty is a Political Synonym of Competitiveness". Archived from the original on 12 February 2008. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
308. Åslund, Anders (6 May 2019). "The Illusions of Putin's Russia". Atlantic Council. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
309. Lynch, Dov (2005). "The enemy is at the gate": Russia after Beslan. International Affairs 81 (1), 141–161.
310. Putin tightens grip on security, BBC News, 13 September 2004.
311. "Президентское фильтрование губернаторов оценили политики". Radiovesti.ru. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
312. Kramer, Andrew E. (22 April 2007). "50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio". The New York Times. Russia. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
313. Masha Lipman; Anders Aslund (2 December 2004). "Russian Media Criticism of Vladimir Putin: Evidence and Significance". Carnegieendowment.org. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
314. "State Duma Approves Liberal Political Reforms". RIA Novosti. 28 February 2012. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
315. "Arkady Rotenberg". Forbes. 2013. Retrieved 23 December 2013.
316. Sharlet, Robert (2005). "In Search of the Rule of Law". In White; Gitelman; Sakwa (eds.). Developments in Russian Politics. Vol. 6. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3522-1.
317. Main, John. (2009). Russia country study guide : army and national. : Intl Business Pubns Usa. ISBN 978-1-4387-4042-3. OCLC 946230798.
318. Guriyev, Sergey (16 August 2019). "20 Years of Vladimir Putin: The Transformation of the Economy". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
319. Aris, Ben; Tkachev, Ivan (19 August 2019). "Long Read: 20 Years of Russia's Economy Under Putin, in Numbers". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
320. Becker, Torbjörn (15 March 2018). "The Russian Economy Under Putin (So Far)" (PDF). freepolicybriefs.org. Free Network. p. 3. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
321. Malofeeva, Katya; Brenton, Tim (15 August 2007). "Putin's Economy – Eight Years On". Russia Profile. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 23 April 2008.
322. Iikka. Korhonen et al. The challenges of the Medvedev era Archived 20 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Bank of Finland's Institute for Economies in Transition, 24 June 2008.
323. "Russia's economy under Vladimir Putin: achievements and failures". RIA Novosti. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
324. "WTO | Accessions: Russian Federation". wto.org. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
325. "Владимир Путин учредил открытое акционерное общество "Объединенная авиастроительная корпорация"" [Vladimir Putin established the United Aircraft Corporation, an open joint stock company]. Президент России (in Russian). 21 February 2006. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
326. Zvereva, Polina (11 October 2009). "State-sponsored consolidation". Russia & CIS Observer. 3 (26).
327. "UAC to receive largest post Soviet govt support package | CAPA". centreforaviation.com. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
328. "Объединенная авиастроительная корпорация задолжала банкам полтриллиона рублей" [United Aircraft Corporation owes banks half a trillion rubles]. vesti.ru (in Russian). 1 September 2020. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
329. "Russia, China launch gas pipeline 'Power of Siberia'". Deutsche Welle. 2 December 2019. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
330. "Sanctions boost Russian economic resilience". Deutsche Welle. 24 March 2017. Archived from the original on 31 March 2017.
331. "How the Sanctions Are Helping Putin". Politico.
332. Kitroeff, Natalie Natalie; Weisenthal, Joe (16 December 2014). "Here's Why the Russian Ruble Is Collapsing". Bloomberg.
333. "OCCRP 2014 Person of the Year". Retrieved 31 December 2014.
334. "Vladimir Putin named Person of the Year for 'innovation' in 'organised crime'". International Business Times. 3 January 2015.
335. "When will Russia become the world's fifth biggest economy? Don't ask Vladimir Putin". Meduza. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
336. The New York Times. 6 November 2004. Retrieved 20 April 2008.
337. Tony Johnson. "G8's Gradual Move toward Post-Kyoto Climate Change Policy". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 29 December 2009. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
338. The Amur Tiger Programme premier.gov.ru Archived 22 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
339. The White Whale Programme premier.gov.ru Archived 13 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
340. The Polar Bear Programme premier.gov.ru Archived 13 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
341. The Snow Leopard Programme premier.gov.ru Archived 13 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
342. "The President of Russia attended the ceremonial signing of the Act on Canonical Communion that was held in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour" (Press release). Embassy of Russia in Ottawa. 17 May 2007. Archived from the original on 11 December 2008. Retrieved 2 October 2008.
343. No love lost, Yossi Mehlman, Haaretz, 11 December 2005.
344. Phyllis Berman Lea Goldman, (15 September 2003). "Cracked De Beers". Forbes.
345. Krichevsky, Lev (10 October 2011). ""In Putin's return, Russian Jews see stability". Jewish Telegraphic Agency". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
346. "Ronald S. Lauder: Russia's fight against anti-Semitism isn't just good for Jews – it's good for Russia as well". World Jewish Congress. 1 November 2016. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
347. ^ "Missionaries are struggling to work under new Russia law banning proselytizing". The Washington Post. 2016.
348. "Russia's mysterious campaign against Jehovah's Witnesses". ABC News. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
349. Guy Faulconbridge Russian navy to start sorties in Mediterranean. Reuters. 5 December 2007.
350. Начало встречи с Министром обороны Анатолием Сердюковым [Start of the meeting with Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov] (in Russian). Kremlin.ru. 5 December 2007. Archived from the original on 8 June 2008.
351. ^ "Military reform to change army structure. What about its substance?". RIA Novosti. 17 October 2008. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
352. Majumdar, Dave (1 March 2018). "Russia's Nuclear Weapons Buildup Is Aimed at Beating U.S. Missile Defenses". The National Interest. US. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
353. ^ Hurlbert, Heather (26 October 2018). "Russia Violated an Arms Treaty. Trump Ditched It, Making the Nuclear Threat Even Worse". New York. US. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
354. "Aggressors Will Be Annihilated, We Will Go to Heaven as Martyrs, Putin Says". The Moscow Times. Russia. 19 October 2018. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
355. William J. Broad (19 February 2008). "Russia's Claim Under Polar Ice Irks American". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
356. Adrian Blomfield (11 June 2008). "Russia plans Arctic military build-up". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
357. Mia Bennett (4 July 2011). "Russia, Like Other Arctic States, Solidifies Northern Military Presence". Foreign Policy Association. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
358. "Laws of Attrition: Crackdown on Russia's Civil Society after Putin's Return to the Presidency," Human Rights Watch pdf report, 24 April 2013.
359. Russia: Worst Human Rights Climate in Post-Soviet Era, Unprecedented Crackdown on Civil Society Human Rights Watch Summary, 24 April 2013.
360. North, Andrew (4 May 2016). "'We'll cut off your head': open season for LGBT attacks in Kyrgyzstan". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
361. Luhn, Alec (1 September 2013). "Russian anti-gay law prompts rise in homophobic violence". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
362. Keating, Joshua (9 October 2014). "The Chilling Effects of Russia's Anti-Gay Law, One Year Later". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
363. "Russia's LGBT Youth Victimized by 'Gay Propaganda' Law". Retrieved 21 June 2017.
364. "Putin Signs Controversial 'Foreign Agent' Law Expansion". The Moscow Times. 30 December 2020.
365. Odynova, Alexandra (31 December 2020). "Putin ends 2020 by tightening the legal noose on press and individual freedoms". CBS News.
366. "Списки преследуемых". Правозащитный центр «Мемориал». 4 October 2017. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
367. Council, Russian-speaking Community; Inc. (14 June 2021). "Russia's Political Prisoners Directory". American Russian-Speaking Association for Civil & Human Rights. Retrieved 11 October 2021. {{cite web}}: |last2= has generic name (help)
368. Scott Gehlbach, "Reflections on Putin and the Media". Post-Soviet Affairs 26#1 (2010): 77–87.
369. ""How Putin Silences Dissent: Inside the Kremlin's Crackdown"". Vol. 95#1. Foreign Affairs. 2016. p. 38.
370. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015).
371. Marian K. Leighton, "Muzzling the Russian Media Again." (2016): 820–826.
372. Robert W. Orttung and Christopher Walker, "Putin and Russia's crippled media". Russian Analytical Digest 21.123 (2013): 2–6 online Archived 16 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine
373. Levin, Eve (Fall 2011). "Muscovy and Its Mythologies". Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History. 12 (4): 773–788. doi:10.1353/kri.2011.0058. S2CID 159746900.
374. Sergei Prozorov, "Russian conservatism in the Putin presidency: The dispersion of a hegemonic discourse." Journal of Political Ideologies 10#2 (2005): 121–143.
375. Marlene Laruelle, "The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant‐Garde in Russia." Russian Review 75#4 (2016): 626–644.
376. Sirke Mäkinen, "Surkovian narrative on the future of Russia: making Russia a world leader." Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 27#2 (2011): 143–165.
377. Gerlach, Julia; Töpfer, Jochen, eds. (2014). The Role of Religion in Eastern Europe Today. Springer. p. 135. ISBN 978-3-658-02441-3.
378. Myers (2016). The New Tsar. p. 404. ISBN 978-0-345-80279-8.
379. Woods, Mark (3 March 2016). "How the Russian Orthodox Church is backing Vladimir Putin's new world order". Christian Today.
380. Mattingly, Terry (19 September 2016). "Dear editors at The New York Times: Vladimir Putin is a Russian, but Putin is not Russia". getreligion.org. Get Religion. Retrieved 27 February 2022. ... divide these people into at least three groups ..., a response to Higgins, Andrew (13 September 2016). "In Expanding Russian Influence, Faith Combines With Firepower". The New York Times.
381. Times, The Moscow (14 December 2017). "Guess What? Vladimir Putin Is a Pro-Choice Champion". The Moscow Times.
382. "Putin the Pro-Choice Champion – IWMF". www.iwmf.org.
383. "Putin offers reasonable approach to abortion ban issue". TASS.
384. Times, The Moscow (27 October 2020). "Putin Orders Government to Improve Abortion Prevention Efforts". The Moscow Times.
385. Kramer, Andrew E. (3 March 2020). "Putin Proposes Constitutional Ban on Gay Marriage". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
386. Roth, Andrew (2 March 2020). "Putin submits plans for constitutional ban on same-sex marriage". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
387. "Putin Proposes to Enshrine God, Heterosexual Marriage in Constitution". The Moscow Times. 2 March 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
388. "Sochi speech". Media.kremlin.ru. 2007. Archived from the original (WMV) on 10 July 2007.
389. "Sochi 2014: Putin declares gay athletes welcome", BBC (28 October 2013).
390. Bershidsky, Leonid (28 June 2019). "Why Putin Sounds Alt-Right Though He Really Isn't". The Moscow Times. MoscowTimes LLC. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
391. Kotkin, Stephen (3 October 2018). "Technology and Governance in Russia: Possibilities". Hoover Institution. Hoover Institution. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
392. Putin, Vladimir (24 December 2012). "For Russia, deepening friendship with India is a top foreign policy priority". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
393. "India, Russia sign new defence deals". BBC News. 24 December 2012. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
394. Emily Tamkin (8 July 2020). "Why India and Russia Are Going to Stay Friends". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
395. "Russia's 'Pivot to Asia' and the SCO". The Diplomat. 21 July 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
396. Sergey Kulik (7 July 2015). "Russia and the BRICS: Priorities of the Presidency". Council of Councils. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
397. Reid Standish (1 September 2020). "China, Russia Deepen Their Ties Amid Pandemic, Conflicts With The West". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
398. Sharkov, Damien (18 July 2018). "Russia wants to build a rail bridge to Japan, linking Tokyo to Europe". Newsweek. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
399. Abiru, Taisuke. "Japan-Russia Relations in the Post-Abe Era". Carnegie Moscow Center. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
400. "Resetting Japan-Russia Relations". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
401. "Russia, Mongolia Sign New Treaty To Bring Partnership To 'Whole New Level'". Radio Free Europe. 3 September 2019.
402. "Putin promises infrastructure investment in Mongolia". France 24. 4 September 2019. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
403. Peter Walker (6 September 2007). "Putin signs Indonesia arms deal". The Guardian.
404. "Putin: Russia and Indonesia are Linked by Long-standing and Close Ties". Setkab. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
405. "The Russia–Vietnam comprehensive partnership". East Asia Forum. 9 October 2012. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
406. "Russian-Vietnamese relations on the rise — Putin". tass.com. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
407. Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche. "Russia's new role in Afghanistan | DW | 2 March 2016". DW.COM. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
408. "Hamid Karzai and the Russia Connection". The Diplomat. 3 November 2017.
409. "President Putin bestows Order of Friendship on Filipino". 22 November 2019.
410. "Rodrigo Duterte tells Vladimir Putin: 'I just want to be friends'". The Independent. 28 November 2016.
411. Nile Bowie (10 September 2019). "The ties that bind Mahathir to Moscow". Asia Times.
412. "Bangladesh, Russia agree to keep improving relations". BDNews24. 3 April 2018.
413. Dadan Upadhyay (18 January 2013). "Hasina's visit: Russia edges out China from Bangladesh". Russia Beyond the News.
414. Don Kirk (20 July 2000). "Putin Is Acclaimed On Pyongyang Visit : After Decades of Sullen Isolation, North Korea Emerges as a Key Player". The New York Times.
415. Times, The Moscow (5 September 2017). "Putin Condemns Myanmar Violence After Mass Rally in Chechnya". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
416. "Russia working closely with post-coup Myanmar on military supplies – exporter". Reuters. 1 July 2021.
417. Kramer, Andrew E. (31 August 2008). "Russia Claims Its Sphere of Influence in the World". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
418. Safire, William (22 May 1994). "ON LANGUAGE; The Near Abroad". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
419. Polish head rejects Putin attack, BBC News (24 December 2004).
420. "After Russian Invasion of Georgia, Putin's Words Stir Fears about Ukraine", Kyiv Post (30 November 2010).
421. Bohm, M. Ukraine Is Putin's Favorite Vassal. The Moscow Times. 25 December 2013.
422. Walker, Shaun (4 March 2014). "Russian takeover of Crimea will not descend into war, says Vladimir Putin". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
423. Yoon, Sangwon; Krasnolutska, Daryna; Choursina, Kateryna (4 March 2014). "Russia Stays in Ukraine as Putin Channels Yanukovych Request". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
424. Radyuhin, Vladimir (1 March 2014). "Russian Parliament approves use of army in Ukraine". The Hindu. Chennai, India.
425. "Vladimir Putin signs treaty for Russia to take Crimea from Ukraine – video". The Guardian. 18 March 2014. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
426. ^ "Russia President Vladimir Putin signs treaty to annex Crimea after residents vote to leave Ukraine". CBS News. 18 March 2014.
427. "Has Vladimir Putin blinked over Ukraine?". The Daily Telegraph. 7 July 2014. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
428. Совещание послов и постоянных представителей России [Conference of Russian ambassadors and permanent representatives]. President of Russia (in Russian). 1 July 2014. Retrieved 12 December 2021. И хочу, чтобы все понимали: наша страна будет и впредь энергично отстаивать права русских, наших соотечественников за рубежом, использовать для этого весь арсенал имеющихся средств: от политических и экономических – до предусмотренных в международном праве гуманитарных операций, права на самооборону.
429. "Putin has lost Ukraine, US diplomat says". Retrieved 13 October 2018.
430. Bershidsky, Leonid (13 October 2018). "Putin Is the Biggest Loser of Orthodox Schism". Bloomberg.com.
431. Putin says Russians and Ukrainians 'practically one people', Reuters (29 August 2014).
432. Putin: Ukrainian Literature Library must not be lost in any circumstances, Interfax-Ukraine (26 December 2015).
433. Putin, Vladimir (15 August 2021). "The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians". moderndiplomacy.eu. Retrieved 17 March 2022. I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties ... have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship ... is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.
434. Roth, Andrew (7 December 2021). "Putin's Ukraine rhetoric driven by distorted view of neighbour". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
435. Georgiy Kasianov; Mikhail Krom; Alexei Miller (14 July 2021). "'This isn't an argument about the past' We asked professional historians to weigh in on Putin's 'historical article'". Meduza. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
436. Шойгу обязал военных изучить статью Путина об Украине [Shoigu ordered the military to study Putin's article on Ukraine]. RBK (in Russian). 15 July 2021. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
437. "Russia and Eurasia". Heritage.org. Archived from the original on 25 April 2009. Retrieved 10 May 2009.
438. "Day-by-day: Georgia-Russia crisis". BBC News. 21 August 2008. Retrieved 10 May 2009.
439. New Integration Project for Eurasia – A Future That Is Being Born Today, Izvestiya (3 October 2011).
440. Bryanski, Gleb (3 October 2011). "Russia's Putin says wants to build "Eurasian Union"". Yahoo! News. Reuters. Archived from the original on 6 October 2011. Retrieved 4 October 2011.
441. Kilner, James (6 October 2011). "Kazakhstan welcomes Putin's Eurasian Union concept". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 8 October 2011.
442. "Russia sees union with Belarus and Kazakhstan by 2015". BBC News. 18 November 2011. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
443. "Ru-ru". Eurasian Economic Union. Archived from the original on 17 April 2016. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
444. Bruce Pannier (5 May 2000). "Russia: Uzbekistan Renews Old Relations". RFE/RL.
445. "Putin Meets Karimov; Russia To Write Off Uzbek Debt". RFE/RL. 10 December 2014.
446. "Russia and NATO greet arrival of a warm front". The Guardian. 29 May 2002.
447. ^ America's Failed (Bi-Partisan) Russia Policy by Stephen F. Cohen, HuffPost
448. "EUROPE : Chechnya Summons Uneasy Memories in Former East Bloc : Ex-Soviet satellites look warily on the Russian offensive. Their fears create a new urgency for membership in NATO". Los Angeles Times. 14 January 1995. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
449. "Irony Amid the Menace | CEPA". 26 May 2020. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
450. ^ Stuermer, Michael (2008). Putin and the Rise of Russia. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 55, 57 & 192. ISBN 978-0-297-85510-1. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
451. Thom Shanker; Mark Landler (11 February 2007). "Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability". The New York Times.
452. "Interview for Indian Television Channel Doordarshan and Press Trust of India News Agency". Kremlin.ru. 18 January 2007. Archived from the original on 4 May 2008. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
453. ^ "Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy (43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy)". 10 February 2007. Archived from the original on 9 March 2012.
454. Watson, Rob (10 February 2007). "Putin's speech: Back to cold war? Putin's speech: Back to cold war?". BBC.
455. "Munich Conference on Security Policy, As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, 11 February 2007". Defenselink.mil. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
456. "Press Conference following the end of the G8 Summit". Kremlin.ru. 8 June 2007. Archived from the original on 4 May 2008. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
457. "Russia walks away from CFE arms treaty". fijilive.com. 12 December 2007. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
458. "Putin: supports for Kosovo unilateral independence "immoral, illegal"". Xinhua News Agency. 14 February 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
459. "Putin calls Kosovo independence 'terrible precedent'". The Sydney Morning Herald. 23 February 2008.
460. "Address by President of the Russian Federation". President of Russia.
461. "Why the Kosovo "precedent" does not justify Russia's annexation of Crimea". Washington Post.
462. Simpson, Emma (16 January 2006). "Merkel cools Berlin Moscow ties". BBC News. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
463. "Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin: the odd couple". Financial Times. 2 October 2015.
464. "Putin pays late-night visit to 'old friend' Berlusconi". 17 October 2014.
465. "West in "medieval crusade" on Gaddafi: Putin Archived 23 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine." The Times (Reuters). 21 March 2011.
466. Shuster, Simon. "The World According to Putin," Time 16 September 2013, pp. 30–35.
467. "Battle for Ukraine: How the west lost Putin". Financial Times. 2 February 2015. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
468. U.S., other powers kick Russia out of G8, CNN
469. "Russia Temporarily Kicked Out of G8 Club of Rich Countries". Business Insider. 18 June 2013. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
470. Demirjian, Karoun; Birnbaum, Michael (24 October 2014). "Russia's president excoriates the United States for world's problems". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
471. "Russian President Vladimir Putin says 'only an insane person' would fear Russian attack on NATO". Daily News. 7 June 2015.
472. Putin: Relations with Finland extremely good – YLE News
473. "Putin Congratulates Trump on Victory and Hopeful of Better Ties". Bloomberg L.P. 9 November 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
474. "Vladimir Putin likely gave go-ahead for U.S. cyberattack, intelligence officials say". CBS News. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
475. Englund, Will (28 July 2016). "The roots of the hostility between Putin and Clinton". The Washington Post.
476. "The top four reasons Vladimir Putin might have a grudge against Hillary Clinton". National Post. 16 December 2016.
477. "Why Putin hates Hillary". Politico. 26 July 2016.
478. "Putin's Image Rises in US, Mostly Among Republicans". Gallup. 21 February 2017.
479. "US-Russia relations fail to improve in Trump's first year and they are likely to get worse". The Independent. 19 January 2018.
480. "Vladimir Putin says US-Russia relations are worse since Donald Trump took office". The Independent. 12 April 2017.
481. Putin, Vladimir (18 June 2020). "The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II". The National Interest.
482. Middelaar, Luuk van (26 June 2020). "Poetin is politicus, en dus historicus". NRC Handelsblad.
483. ^ Gonzalo Vina & Sebastian Alison (20 July 2007). "Brown Defends Russian Expulsions, Decries Killings". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
484. "UK spied on Russians with fake rock". BBC News. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
485. "Vladimir Putin popularity & fame". YouGov. YouGov. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
486. "Full Report of the Litvinenko Inquiry". The New York Times. 21 January 2016.
487. Dodd, Vikram; Harding, Luke; MacAskill, Ewen (8 March 2018). "Sergei Skripal: former Russian spy poisoned with nerve agent, say police". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
488. Borger, Julian (15 March 2018). "Spy poisoning: allies back UK and blast Russia at UN security council". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
489. Grierson, Jamie; Wintour, Patrick (17 March 2018). "Sergei Skripal: Russia expels 23 UK diplomats as row deepens". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
490. Fiona Hamilton, Tom Parfitt, Moscow | Sam Coates, Rhys Blakely, Lucy Fisher. "Johnson points finger at Putin for Salisbury spy attack". The Times. Retrieved 17 March 2018.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
491. "Bolsonaro e Putin discutirão "temas da agenda mundial"" (in Portuguese). dw.com. 14 February 2022.
492. Russia Forges Nuclear Links With Venezuela Archived 10 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine France 24
493. "World – Americas – Russian bombers land in Venezuela". BBC. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
494. Tyler, Patrick (16 December 2000). "Putin, in Cuba, Signals Priority of Ties to U.S." The New York Times. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
495. McCoy, Terrence; Harlan, Chico (24 February 2022). "The global right has lionized Putin. The Ukraine attack leaves many leaders on awkward footing". The Washington Post. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
496. "Russia Courts Indonesia". Brtsis.com. 12 October 2007. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
497. Coorey, Phillip (7 September 2007). "Putin and Howard Sign Uranium Deal". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
498. Tony Abbott condemns Russian 'invasion of Ukraine' as bullying; theguardian.com; 29 August 2014
499. Tony Abbott discusses MH17 with Vladimir Putin at APEC; Kremlin says Russian president was not 'shirtfronted'; abc.net.au; 12 November 2014
500. The Latest: Putin denies Russia responsible for MH17 downing; apnews.com; 26 May 2014
501. Pacific condemns Russia–Ukraine conflict says PM; www.fbcnews.com.fj; 3 March 2022
502. Putin: Iran Has Right to Develop Peaceful Nuclear Programme Archived 6 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine, 16 October 2007, Rbc.ru
503. "Putin's warning to the U.S." Reuters. 16 October 2007. Archived from the original on 17 October 2007.
504. Владимир Путин положительно оценил итоги Второго Каспийского саммита на встрече с Президентом Ирана Махмудом Ахмадинежадом [Vladimir Putin assessed the results of the Second Caspian Summit positively on meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] (in Russian). Kremlin.ru. 16 October 2007. Archived from the original on 4 May 2008.
505. Визит в Исламскую Республику Иран. Второй Каспийский саммит [Visit to Iran. Second Caspian Summit] (in Russian). Kremlin.ru. 16 October 2007. Archived from the original on 4 May 2008.
506. "Putin confirms Iran visit, brushes off 'plot' reports". Lebanon Wire. 15 October 2007. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015.
507. Vladimir Putin defies assassination threats to make historic visit to Tehran, 16 October 2007, The Times.
508. "Answer to a Question at the Joint Press Conference Following the Second Caspian Summit". Kremlin.ru. 16 October 2007. Archived from the original on 4 May 2008.
509. "Putin's visit 'historic and strategic'". Gulf News. 18 April 2008. Archived from the original on 14 May 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
510. Parks, Cara (21 March 2011). "Putin: Military Intervention In Libya Resembles 'Crusades'". HuffPost.
511. Crugnale, James (15 December 2011). "Vladimir Putin Blames US Drones For Gaddafi Death, Slams John McCain". Mediaite.com. Archived from the original on 4 January 2012. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
512. Citizen, Ottawa (16 December 2011). "Putin claims U.S. planned murder of Gadhafi". Canada.com. Archived from the original on 20 October 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
513. Trenin, Dmitri (9 February 2012). "Why Russia Supports Assad". The New York Times.
514. Fred Weir (19 January 2012). "Why Russia is willing to sell arms to Syria". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
515. Viscusi, Gregory (1 June 2012). "Hollande Clashes With Putin Over Ouster of Syria's Assad". Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
516. Putin, Vladimir V. (11 September 2013). "A Plea for Caution From Russia". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
517. "Putin says US, Russia agree on how to destroy Syria's chemical weapons". The Jerusalem Post. 8 October 2013.
518. Melik Kaylan. "Putin's Syria Gambit Could Be His Waterloo". Forbes.
519. Kaylan, Melik. "Is Putin About To Invade Ukraine?". Forbes.
520. Pedler, John (2015). A Word Before Leaving: A Former Diplomat's Weltanschauung. p. 129.
521. "Vladimir Putin signs deals worth $1.3bn during UAE visit". Young Herald. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
522. "Putin highlights unique bond formed between Russia, Israel". tass.com. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
523. "Opinion: The truth about Putin's 86-percent approval rating. How people fail to understand survey data about support for the Kremlin". Meduza. Retrieved 10 December 2015. It's wrong to compare directly the ratings of Russian and foreign politicians. In democratic countries, politics is based on competition and the constant contestation between different candidates and platforms. The Russian political system, on the other hand, is based on the absence of a credible alternative. Accordingly, public approval doesn't indicate the country's assessment of concrete political decisions, but a general acceptance of the course chosen by those in power.
524. Madslien, Jorn (4 July 2007). "Russia's economic might: spooky or soothing?". BBC News. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
525. Arkhipov, Ilya (24 January 2013). "Putin Approval Rating Falls to Lowest Since 2000: Poll". Bloomberg. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
526. "Putin's Approval Rating Soars to 87%, Poll Says". The Moscow Times. 6 August 2014. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
527. "The world's most popular politicians: Putin's approval rating hits 86%". Independent. 27 February 2015.
528. "Vladimir Putin's approval rating at record levels". The Guardian. 23 July 2015.
529. Июльские рейтинги одобрения и доверия (in Russian). Levada Centre. 23 July 2015. Archived from the original on 29 January 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
530. "Putin's approval ratings hit 89 percent, the highest they've ever been". The Washington Post. 24 June 2015.
531. "Economic Problems, Corruption Fail to Dent Putin's Image". gallup.com. 28 March 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
532. "Quarter of Russians Think Living Standards Improved During Putin's Rule" (in Russian). Oprosy.info. Archived from the original on 31 July 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
533. No wonder they like Putin by Norman Stone, 4 December 2007, The Times.
534. "Economic Problems, Corruption Fail to Dent Putin's Image". gallup.com. 28 March 2017. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
535. "Alexei Navalny: Is Russia's Anti-Corruption Crusader Vladimir Putin's Kryptonite?". Newsweek. 17 April 2017. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
536. "New Reports Highlight Russia's Deep-Seated Culture of Corruption". Voice of America. 26 January 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
537. "COUNTERING RUSSIAN KLEPTOCRATS: WHAT THE WEST'S RESPONSE TO ASSAULT ON UKRAINE SHOULD LOOK LIKE". Transparency International. 4 March 2022. Corruption is endemic in Russia. With a score of just 29 out of 100, Russia is the lowest-ranking country in Europe on Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index.
538. "Одобрение органов власти" (in Russian). Retrieved 25 May 2020.
539. "Successful World Cup fails to halt slide in Vladimir Putin's popularity". The Guardian. 16 July 2018.
540. "Trust in Putin Drops to 39% as Russians Face Later Retirement, Poll Says". Retrieved 10 October 2018.
541. "Disquiet on the Home Front: Kremlin Propagandists Struggle to Contain the Fallout from Pension Reform and Local Elections". Disinfo Portal. 1 October 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
542. "Things are going wrong for Vladimir Putin". The Economist. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
543. ""Левада-Центр": две трети россиян считают, что в проблемах страны виноват Путин". Znak.com. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
544. Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Refworld | 'Good Tsar, Bad Boyars': Popular Attitudes and Azerbaijan's Future". Refworld. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
545. "Рейтинг доверия Путину достиг исторического минимума. Он упал вдвое с 2015 года". Tvrain.ru. 18 January 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
546. "Russians' trust in Putin has plummeted. But that's not the Kremlin's only problem". The Washington Post. 2019.
547. ^ Fokht, Elizaveta (20 June 2019). "Is Putin's popularity in decline?". Retrieved 20 June 2019.
548. "Record 20% of Russians Say They Would Like to Leave Russia". Gallup.com. 4 April 2019. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
549. "How Putin and the Kremlin lost Russian youths". The Washington Post.
550. "Доверие политикам (1)". wciom.ru. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
551. "Доверие политикам (2)". wciom.ru. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
552. "Одобрение институтов власти и доверие политикам" (in Russian). Retrieved 25 May 2020.
553. Kolesnikov, Andrei (15 June 2020). "Why Putin's Rating Is at a Record Low". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
554. "Москвичи рассказали, кого видят президентом. На первом месте Путин, потом Навальный". Znak.com. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
555. "What Vladimir Putin Is Up To in Ukraine". Time. 22 November 2021.
556. "How do young Ukrainians and Russians feel about another war?". Al Jazeera. 7 February 2022.
557. "Vladimir Putin's popularity with young Russians plummeting, opinion poll finds". The Times. 11 December 2020.
558. "Акции протеста 12 июня" (in Russian). Levada Centre. 13 June 2017. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
559. "Trust fall The Kremlin plans to reboot Russia's mass vaccination campaign, but there are worries this will bring down Putin's ratings". Meduza. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
560. "Russians told to attend pro-war Vladimir Putin rally in Moscow or 'resign' from jobs". The Hill. 18 March 2022.
561. "'Pure Orwell': how Russian state media spins invasion as liberation". The Guardian. 25 February 2022.
562. ^ Gessen, Masha (4 March 2022). "The War That Russians Do Not See". The New Yorker.
563. Korenyuk, Maria; Goodman, Jack (4 March 2022). "Ukraine war: 'My city's being shelled, but mum won't believe me'". BBC News.
564. Hopkins, Valerie (6 March 2022). "Ukrainians Find That Relatives in Russia Don't Believe It's a War". The New York Times.
565. The TV is winning, Meduza, 14 March 2022
566. "Use Only Official Sources About Ukraine War, Russian Media Watchdog Tells Journalists". The Moscow Times. 24 February 2022. Archived from the original on 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
567. ^ "Faced with foreign pressure, Russians rally around Putin, poll shows". The New York Times. 31 March 2022.
568. ^ "In Russia, opinion polls are a political weapon". openDemocracy. 9 March 2022.
569. "Misinformation colors how Russians are seeing the Ukrainian war". The Hill. 11 March 2022.
570. ^ "Независимые социологи: 71% россиян испытывает гордость из-за войны с Украиной". 17 March 2022. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
571. ^ "Independent sociologists: The vast majority of Russians feel proud of the war with Ukraine". Belsat TV. 18 March 2022.
572. "58 percent of Russians support the invasion of Ukraine, and 23 percent oppose it, new poll shows". The Washington Post. 8 March 2022. Archived from the original on 14 March 2022.
573. "Putin rebuilds the Iron Curtain". Axios. 11 March 2022.
574. "Russians in the dark about true state of war amid country's Orwellian media coverage". CNN. 3 April 2022.
575. "ОДОБРЕНИЕ ИНСТИТУТОВ, РЕЙТИНГИ ПАРТИЙ И ПОЛИТИКОВ". levada.ru. 30 March 2022.
576. "Putin's Approval Surges After Launch of 'Military Operation' in Ukraine". The Moscow Times. 31 March 2022.
577. "Поддерживают ли россияне войну в Украине? Смотря как спросить". BBC News Russian. 8 March 2022.
578. Yaffa, Joshua. "Why Do So Many Russians Say They Support the War in Ukraine?". The New Yorker.
579. "15 Years of Vladimir Putin: 15 Ways He Has Changed Russia and the World". The Guardian. 6 May 2015.
580. Kasparov, Garry (28 October 2015). "Garry Kasparov: How the United States and Its Western Allies Propped Up Putin". The Atlantic. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
581. Alexei Navalny: 'Putin is the Tsar of corruption'; www.bbc.com; 23 January 2016
582. "Hillary Clinton Describes Relationship With Putin: 'It's... interesting'". Politico. 17 January 2016. Retrieved 14 April 2016.
583. "Hillary Clinton: Putin is Arrogant and Tough". GPS with Fareed Zakaria. 27 July 2014. Archived from the original on 25 June 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2016 – via YouTube.
584. "President Vladimir Putin on Sec. Hillary Clinton". CNN. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
585. "Dalai Lama attacks 'self-centered' Vladimir Putin". The Daily Telegraph. 7 September 2014. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
586. Henry Kissinger (5 March 2014). "How The Ukraine Crisis Ends". The Washington Post.
587. Rosenberg, Steve (9 October 2019). "Berlin Wall anniversary: The 'worst night of my life'". BBC News. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
588. ^ "Mikhail Gorbachev claims Vladimir Putin saved Russia from falling apart". International Business Times. 27 December 2014.
589. Struck, Doug (5 December 2007). "Gorbachev Applauds Putin's Achievements". The Washington Post.
590. "Decoding Vladimir Putin's Plan". U.S. News & World Report. 5 January 2015.
591. State Building in Putin's Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism p. 278, Brian D. Taylor. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
592. Bader, Max; Ham, Carolien van (2015). "What explains regional variation in election fraud? Evidence from Russia: a research note". Post-Soviet Affairs. 31 (6): 514–528. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2014.969023. ISSN 1060-586X. S2CID 154548875.
593. "Russia | Country report | Freedom in the World | 2005". Dreedom House. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
594. Diamond, Larry (7 January 2015). "Facing Up to the Democratic Recession". Journal of Democracy. 26 (1): 141–155. doi:10.1353/jod.2015.0009. ISSN 1086-3214. S2CID 38581334.
595. Levitsky, Steven; Way, Lucan A. (2010). Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49148-8.
596. Gainous, Jason; Wagner, Kevin M.; Ziegler, Charles E. (2018). "Digital media and political opposition in authoritarian systems: Russia's 2011 and 2016 Duma elections". Democratization. 25 (2): 209–226. doi:10.1080/13510347.2017.1315566. ISSN 1351-0347. S2CID 152199313.
597. Gelman, Vladimir (2015). Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes. University of Pittsburgh Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt155jmv1. ISBN 978-0-8229-6368-4. JSTOR j.ctt155jmv1.
598. Ross, Cameron (2018). "Regional elections in Russia: instruments of authoritarian legitimacy or instability?". Palgrave Communications. 4 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1057/s41599-018-0137-1. ISSN 2055-1045.
599. White, Stephen (2014). White, Stephen (ed.). Russia's Authoritarian Elections. doi:10.4324/9781315872100. ISBN 978-1-315-87210-0.
600. Ross, Cameron (2011). "Regional Elections and Electoral Authoritarianism in Russia". Europe-Asia Studies. 63 (4): 641–661. doi:10.1080/09668136.2011.566428. ISSN 0966-8136. S2CID 154016379.
601. Skovoroda, Rodion; Lankina, Tomila (2017). "Fabricating votes for Putin: new tests of fraud and electoral manipulations from Russia" (PDF). Post-Soviet Affairs. 33 (2): 100–123. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2016.1207988. ISSN 1060-586X. S2CID 54830119.
602. Moser, Robert G.; White, Allison C. (2017). "Does electoral fraud spread? The expansion of electoral manipulation in Russia". Post-Soviet Affairs. 33 (2): 85–99. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2016.1153884. ISSN 1060-586X. S2CID 54037737.
603. "Russia Downgraded to 'Not Free' | Freedom House". freedomhouse.org. Archived from the original on 1 January 2017. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
604. "Democracy Index 2015: Democracy in an age of anxiety" (PDF).
605. "A new low for global democracy". The Economist. 9 February 2022.
606. Kekic, Laza. "Index of democracy by Economist Intelligence Unit" (PDF). The Economist. Retrieved 27 December 2007.
607. Diamond, Larry (1 January 2015). "Facing Up to the Democratic Recession". Journal of Democracy. 26 (1): 141–155. doi:10.1353/jod.2015.0009. ISSN 1086-3214. S2CID 38581334.
608. Putin Declares Himself Dictator With The Navalny Verdict; www.forbes.com; 18 July 2018
609. Vladimir Putin has shifted from autocracy to dictatorship; www.economist.com; 13 November 2021
610. "Thousands of civilians in Mariupol may have died in past month - UN tells Reuters". Reuters. 29 March 2022.
611. Parker, Ashley (17 March 2022). "Biden calls Putin a 'war criminal'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
612. Vazquez, Maegan; Carvajal, Nikki (17 March 2022). "Biden calls Putin a 'murderous dictator' and 'pure thug'". CNN. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
613. State of the Union: Joe Biden pledges to make Putin pay for Ukraine invasion; www.theguardian.com; 2 March 2022
614. Ukraine’s U.N. envoy likens Putin to Hitler; news.com.au; 1 March 2022
615. EU targets Russian economy after 'deluded autocrat' Putin invades Ukraine; www.reuters.com; 25 February 2022
616. Latvia's PM says Putin and his regime need to be isolated from the world; www.reuters.com; 25 February 2022
617. EU to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia as leaders meet; www.irishtimes.com]; 24 February 2022
618. A Putin-Macron call leaves France persuaded that Russia wants ‘control of all of Ukraine.’; www.nytimes.com; 3 March 2022
619. French foreign minister calls Putin ‘dictator’; www.aa.com.tr; 25 February 2022
620. Boris Johnson brands Putin ‘dictator’ and vows to end ‘hideous and barbaric’ Ukrainian war; www.independent.co.uk; 24 February 2022
621. Bass, Sadie (5 August 2009). "Putin Bolsters Tough Guy Image With Shirtless Photos, Australian Broadcasting Corporation". ABC News. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
622. ^ Rawnsley, Adam (26 May 2011). "Pow! Zam! Nyet! 'Superputin' Battles Terrorists, Protesters in Online Comic". Wired. Retrieved 27 May 2011.
623. "Putin gone wild: Russia abuzz over pics of shirtless leader". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Associated Press. 22 August 2007. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
624. Kravchenko, Stepan; Biryukov, Andrey (13 March 2020). "Putin Doesn't Like Cult of Personality of Putin, Kremlin Says". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
625. Vladimir Putin diving discovery was staged, spokesman admits, The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
626. "Russians smell something fishy in Putin's latest stunt". Reuters. 29 July 2013. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
627. Kavic, Boris; Novak, Marja; Gaunt, Jeremy (8 March 2016). "Slovenian comedian rocks with Putin parody; Trump to follow". Reuters. Retrieved 21 May 2017.
628. "A senile Putin becomes a parody of his own parody – The Spectator". The Spectator. 19 March 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
629. "Let Putin be your fitness inspiration hero". The Guardian. 2015.
630. Van Vugt, Mark (7 May 2014). "Does Putin Suffer From the Napoleon Complex?". Psychology Today. Retrieved 7 December 2018.
631. "Statesmen and stature: how tall are our world leaders?". The Guardian. 18 October 2011. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
632. "Песни про Путина". Openspace.ru. 14 March 2008. Archived from the original on 18 September 2009. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
633. Как используется бренд "Путин": зажигалки, икра, футболки, консервированный перец Gazeta 30 November 2007.
634. "Vladimir Putin's advisor found dead". CBS News. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
635. "Person of the Year 2007". Time. 2007. Archived from the original on 7 September 2008. Retrieved 8 July 2009.
636. "Putin Answers Questions From Time Magazine". 20 December 2007. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2016 – via YouTube.
637. Albright, Madeleine (23 April 2014). "Vladimir Putin – The Russian Leader Who Truly Tests The West". Time Magazine. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
638. Sharkov, Damien (20 April 2016). "Putin Is a 'Smart But Truly Evil Man,' says Madeleine Albright". Newsweek. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
639. "The World's Most Powerful People 2016". Forbes. 14 December 2016. For the fourth consecutive year, Forbes ranked Russian President Vladimir Putin as the world's most powerful person. From the motherland to Syria to the U.S. presidential elections, Russia's leader continues to get what he wants.
640. Ewalt, David M. (8 May 2018). "The World's Most Powerful People 2018". Forbes. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
641. ^ Sukhotsky, Cyril (5 March 2004), Путинизмы – "продуманный личный эпатаж"? [Putinism – "Thoughtful personal outrageous"?], BBC Russian (in Russian), retrieved 29 January 2017
642. Kharatyan, Kirill (25 December 2012), Кирилл Харатьян: Жаргон Владимира Путина [Vladimir Putin's Jargon], Ведомости (Vedomosti.ru) (in Russian), retrieved 29 January 2017
643. (Sakwa 2008)
644. Sonne, Paul; Miller, Greg (3 October 2021). Written at Moscow. "Secret money, swanky real estate and a Monte Carlo mystery". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
645. Harding, Luke (3 October 2021). Written at Monaco. "Pandora papers reveal hidden riches of Putin's inner circle". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
646. "Investigation Claims to Uncover Putin's Extramarital Daughter". The Moscow Times. 25 November 2020. Archived from the original on 26 November 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
647. "Vladimir Putin and Google: The most popular search queries answered". BBC News. 19 March 2018. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
648. "A new Russian first Lady? Putin hints he may marry again". Reuters. 20 December 2018. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
649. Hoyle, Ben (14 March 2015). "Motherland is gripped by baby talk that Putin is father again". The Times. London. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
650. ^ Sharkov, Damien (2 February 2016). "What Do We Know About Putin's Family?". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
651. "Russia President Vladimir Putin's divorce goes through". BBC News. 2 April 2014. Archived from the original on 2 April 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
652. Allen, Cooper (2 April 2014). "Putin divorce finalized, Kremlin says". USA Today. Archived from the original on 25 April 2014. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
653. MacFarquahar, Neil (13 March 2015). "Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 March 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
654. ^ "Алина Кабаева после долгого перерыва вышла в свет, вызвав слухи о новой беременности (ФОТО, ВИДЕО)" [Alina Kabaeva after a long break was published, triggering rumors of a new pregnancy (PHOTO, VIDEO)]. NEWSru (in Russian). 19 May 2015. Archived from the original on 19 May 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
655. Dettmer, Jamie (28 May 2019). "Reports of Putin Fathering Twins Test Free Speech in Russia". Voice of America. Archived from the original on 13 November 2019. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
656. Besson, Sylvain; Odehnal, Bernhard. "Russisches Staatsgeheimnis – Putins Sohn wurde im Tessin geboren". SonntagsZeitung (in German). Retrieved 1 May 2022.
657. "Путин сообщил о рождении второго внука" [Putin announced the birth of a second grandson] (in Russian). NTV. 15 June 2017. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
658. Agence France-Presse (15 June 2017). "Russia's Putin opens up about grandchildren, appeals for family privacy during live TV show". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 19 November 2020. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
659. Kroft, Steve (19 May 2019). "How the Danske Bank money-laundering scheme involving $230 billion unraveled". CBS News. Archived from the original on 19 May 2019. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
660. "OCCRP – The Russian Banks and Putin's Cousin". reportingproject.net. Archived from the original on 4 November 2015. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
661. Wile, Rob (23 January 2017). "Is Vladimir Putin Secretly the Richest Man in the World?". Time Magazine. Archived from the original on 23 January 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
662. "Quote.Rbc.Ru :: Аюмй Яюмйр-Оерепаспц – Юйжхх, Ярпсйрспю, Мнбнярх, Тхмюмяш". Quote.ru. Archived from the original on 26 October 2007. Retrieved 2 March 2010.
663. ЦИК зарегистрировал список "ЕР" Rossiyskaya Gazeta N 4504 27 October 2007.
664. ЦИК раскрыл доходы Путина Vzglyad. 26 October 2007.
665. Radia, Kirit (8 June 2012). "Putin's Extravagant $700,000 Watch Collection". ABC News. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
666. Hanbury, Mary (23 June 2017). "How Vladimir Putin spends his mysterious fortune rumoured to be worth $70 billion". The Independent. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
667. "Putin's Extravagant $700,000 Watch Collection". ABC News. 8 June 2012.
668. Gennadi Timchenko: Russia's most low-profile billionaire Sobesednik No. 10, 7 March 2007.
669. Harding, Luke (21 December 2007). "Putin, the Kremlin power struggle and the $40bn fortune". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 18 August 2008.
670. "Is Vladimir Putin the richest man on earth?". News.com.au. 26 September 2013. Archived from the original on 8 December 2013. Retrieved 26 September 2013.
671. Joyce, Kathleen (29 June 2019). "What is Russian President Vladimir Putin's net worth?". FOXBusiness. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
672. Tayor, Adam. "Is Vladimir Putin hiding a $200 billion fortune? (And if so, does it matter?)". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
673. William Echols (14 May 2019). "Are 'Putin's Billions' a Myth?". Polygraph.info. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
674. Прямая линия с Владимиром Путиным состоится 14 апреля в 12 часов (in Russian). Echo of Moscow. 8 April 2016. Retrieved 8 April 2016.
675. ^ Luke Harding (3 April 2016). "Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin". The Guardian. London.
676. Der Zirkel der Macht von Vladimir Putin, Süddeutsche Zeitung
677. Wladimir Putin und seine Freunde, Süddeutsche Zeitung
678. Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin, The Guardian
679. "All Putin's Men: Secret Records Reveal Money Network Tied to Russian Leader". panamapapers.icij.org. 3 April 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
680. "Panama Papers: Putin associates linked to 'money laundering'". BBC News. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
681. Galeotti, Mark (4 April 2016). "The Panama Papers show how corruption really works in Russia". Vox Business and Finance. Retrieved 8 April 2016.
682. Harding, Luke (3 April 2016). "Sergei Roldugin, the cellist who holds the key to tracing Putin's hidden fortune". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
683. Kasparov, Garry. "Starr Forum: The Trump-Putin Phenomenon". MIT Center for International Studies. MIT Center for International Studies. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
684. Solovyova, Olga (5 March 2012). "Russian Leaders Not Swapping Residences". The Moscow Times, Russia. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
685. "Тайна за семью заборами". Kommersant.ru. 31 January 2011. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
686. Elder, Miriam (28 August 2012). "Vladimir Putin 'Galley Slave' Lifestyle: Palaces, Planes and a $75,000 Toilet". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
687. How the 1980s Explains Vladimir Putin. The Ozero group. By Fiona Hill & Clifford G. Gaddy, The Atlantic, 14 February 2013.
688. Foreign, Our (3 March 2011). "'Putin Palace' Sells for US$350 Million". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
689. "Putin's Palace? A Mystery Black Sea Mansion Fit for a Tsar". BBC. 4 May 2012. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
690. Russia: Russia president Vladimir Putin rule: achievements, problems and future strategies. Washington, DC: International Business Publications. 2014. p. 85. ISBN 978-1-4330-6774-7. OCLC 956347599.
691. "Putin's spokesman dismisses report of palace on Black Sea". RIA Novosti. 23 December 2010.
692. "Navalny Targets 'Billion-Dollar Putin Palace' in New Investigation". The Moscow Times. 19 January 2021. Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
693. "ФБК опубликовал огромное расследование о "дворце Путина" в Геленджике. Вот главное из двухчасового фильма о строительстве ценой в 100 миллиардов". Meduza.io. 19 January 2021. Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
694. "ФБК опубликовал расследование о "дворце Путина" размером с 39 княжеств Монако". tvrain.ru. 19 January 2021. Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
695. "Сколько собак у Путина?" [How many dogs does Putin have?]. aif.ru (in Russian). 23 October 2017. Archived from the original on 9 October 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
696. ^ Timothy J. Colton; Michael MacFaul (2003). Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: the Russian elections of 1999 and 2000. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. p. . ISBN 978-0-8157-1535-1.
697. Putin Q&A: Full Transcript Time. Retrieved 22 March 2008.
698. "Putin and the monk". FT Magazine. 25 January 2013.
699. "The enduring grip of the men—and mindset—of the KGB". The Economist. 25 April 2020.
700. "Putin to talk pipeline, attend football game". B92. 22 March 2011. Archived from the original on 26 March 2011. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
701. "Bandy, how little known sport is winning converts". The Local. 29 February 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
702. "Vladimir Putin Scores Seven Goals in Epic Hockey Game". Rolling Stone. 9 October 2015. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
703. "Kremlin Biography of President Vladimir Putin". putin.kremlin.ru. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
704. "NPR News: Vladimir Putin: Transcript of Robert Siegel Interview". legacy.npr.org. 15 November 2001. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
705. "Putin awarded eighth dan by international body". Reuters. 10 October 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
706. "Black-Belt President Putin: A Man of Gentle Arts" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016.
707. Putin, Vladimir; Vasily Shestakov; Alexey Levitsky (2004). Judo: History, Theory, Practice. Blue Snake Books. ISBN 978-1-55643-445-7.
708. Hawkins, Derek (18 July 2017). "Is Vladimir Putin a judo fraud?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
709. "I'll Fight Putin Any Time, Any Place He Can't Have Me Arrested". Lawfare. 21 October 2015. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
710. "Investigation on Vladimir's Putin Health • the Project". www.proekt.media. April 2022.
711. "Putin Accompanied by Doctors, Thyroid Cancer Surgeon on Sochi Trips – Report". The Moscow Times. April 2022.
712. "Putin bathes in deer antler extract and regularly sees cancer doctor, report claims". Independent.co.uk. April 2022.
713. ^ "Kremlin slams reports of Putin resignation as 'complete nonsense'". Deutsche Welle. 6 November 2020. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
714. Sabin, Lamiat (22 April 2022). "Video of Vladimir Putin gripping table in meeting sparks concerns about his health". The Independent. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
715. ^ Roth, Clare (28 March 2022). "Putin and Parkinson's: What do experts say?". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
716. "White House, senators and generals question Putin's mental health after two years of pandemic isolation". The Independent. 28 February 2022.
717. "Putin's obsession with Ukraine has made analysts question his rationality". CNBC. 28 February 2022.
718. "Putin's War Looks Increasingly Insane". New York Magazine. 4 March 2022.
719. Вьетнам: Наш президент круче американского. Путину – орден Хо Ши Мина. Нас там пока любят (in Russian). Аргументы и Факты. 7 March 2001.
720. Первый Президент Республики Казахстан Нурсултан Назарбаев Хроника деятельности 2004 год (PDF) (in Russian). Astana. 2009. p. 15. ISBN 978-601-80044-3-8. Президент также подписал указы "О награждении орденом "Алтын ыран" (Золотой орел) Путина В.В."...{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
721. "Chirac décore Poutine". Vidéo Dailymotion. 13 October 2006.
722. "CSTO: SAFE CHOICE IN CENTRAL ASIA". Eurasia Daily Monitor. 4 (191). 2007.
723. "Emomali Rahmon bestows Ismoili Somoni Order on Vladimir Putin | Tajikistan News ASIA-Plus". www.asiaplustj.info.
724. Atul Aneja Putin goes calling on the Saudis. The Hindu. 20 February 2007.
725. Putin Receives Top UAE's Decoration, Order of Zayed Archived 25 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Rbc.ru, 10 September 2007.
726. Sanchez, Fabiola (2 April 2010). "Russia offers Venezuela nuclear help, Chavez says". The Seattle Times.
727. "Ordonnance Souveraine n° 4.504 du 4 octobre 2013 portant élévation dans l'Ordre de Saint-Charles" (in French). Journal de Monaco. 4 October 2013.
728. "Raul Castro Welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin". Escambray. 11 July 2014.
729. "Putin receives Serbia's top state decoration". B92. 16 October 2014.
730. "Putin becomes first foreign leader to get China's Order of Friendship". TASS. 1 January 2016. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
731. INFORM.KZ (28 May 2019). "Nursultan Nazarbayev awards Order of Yelbasy to Vladimir Putin". inform.kz.
732. "President Vladimir Putin was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from Makhtumkuli Turkmen State University". en.kremlin.ru. 19 May 2000.
733. "President Vladimir Putin visited Jawaharlal Nehru University". en.kremlin.ru. 3 October 2000.
734. "The Academic Council of Baku Slavic University at its meeting held on January 8, 2001 by the unanimous decision awarded the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin the title of BSU Honorary Doctor for his service in extending and strengthening scientific, economic and social relations between Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation". 8 January 2001.
735. "Putin Concludes Visit to Armenia Lays Wreath at Genocide Monument". Asbarez. 17 September 2001.
736. "Putin receives honorary doctorate from Athens University". Athens News Agency. 7 December 2001.
737. "Calls grow for revocation of Putin's honorary degree at Yong In University". The Korean Herald. 27 February 2022.
738. "B92 News: Belgrade University to award Putin honorary doctorate". Retrieved 11 June 2012.
739. "Putin honored by University of the Peloponnese". Kathimerini. 23 February 2018.
740. "Xi Jinping Attends a Ceremony at which Tsinghua University Awards Russian President Vladimir Putin an Honorary Doctorate". Retrieved 8 March 2022.
741. "Alexy II is awarded the highest Muslim Order". Interfax-Religion. 4 July 2006.
742. Орден Шейх-уль-ислама (in Russian). Управление Мусульман Кавказа. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016.
743. "Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin awarded the Serbian Orthodox Church's highest distinction | Serbian Orthodox Church [Official web site]". spc.rs. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
744. "Vladimir Putin in China Confucius Peace Prize fiasco". BBC. 15 November 2011. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
745. Wong, Edward (15 November 2011). "In China, Confucius Prize Awarded to Putin". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
746. "Person of the Year 2007". Time. 2007. Archived from the original on 7 September 2008. Retrieved 8 July 2009.
747. "Глобальный игрок. Expert magazine. 48 (589) 24 December 2007". Expert.ru. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
748. Nemenov, Alexander (24 September 2019). "The memories Chechnya holds". Agence France-Presse. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
749. Liotta, Paul (7 October 2015). "On his birthday, 7 things you might not know about Russian president Vladimir Putin". New York Daily News. Retrieved 9 November 2021.

Further reading

External videos
Presentation by Masha Gessen on The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin 8 March 2012, C-SPAN

• Lourie, Richard (2017). Putin: His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-53808-8.
• Arutunyan, Anna (2015) . The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia's Power Cult. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1-56656-990-3. OCLC 881654740.
• Asmus, Ronald (2010). A Little War that Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West. NYU. ISBN 978-0-230-61773-5.
• Frye, Timothy. 2021. Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia. Princeton University Press.
• Gessen, Masha (2012). The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. London: Granta. ISBN 978-1-84708-149-0.
• Judah, Ben (2015). Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20522-0.
• Lipman, Maria. "How Putin Silences Dissent: Inside the Kremlin's Crackdown." Foreign Affairs 95#1 (2016): 38+.
• Myers, Steven Lee. The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (2015).
• Naylor, Aliide. The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front (I.B. Tauris, 2020), 256 pp.
• Rosefielde, Steven. Putin's Russia: Economy, Defence and Foreign Policy (2020) excerpt
• Sakwa, Richard (2008). Putin: Russia's choice. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-93193-6. OCLC 183404357.
• Sakwa, Richard. The Putin Paradox (Bloomsbury, 2020) online.
• Sakwa, Richard. Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (2014). online review Archived 4 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine
• Sperling, Valerie. Sex, Politics, & Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia (Oxford UP, 2015). 360 pp.
• Stoner, Kathryn E. Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order ( Oxford University Press, 2021)
• Toal, Gerard. Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest Over Ukraine and the Caucasus (Oxford UP, 2017).

Historiography

• "Writers have grappled with Vladimir Putin for two decades: Greyness, greed and grievance have been the dominant themes." The Economist 22 March 2022.

External links

• Official Kremlin Personal Website: Vladimir Putin
• Template:Curlie
• A Putin biography from the 2012–13 Stratfor email leak at WikiLeaks
• Appearances on C-SPAN