Vladimir Putin

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© Photo: Presidential Press and Information Office
Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation. Circa 2000

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Владимир Владимирович Путин; born October 7, 1952) has been the President of Russia since May 2012, having already held the office from 1999 to 2008. In the interim period, he was Prime Minister of Russia.

Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin as President on December 31, 1999 and was succeeded by Dmitry Medvedev on March 2, 2008, who he succeeded in turn. Putin remains popular with much of the Russian public despite significant protests against his leadership.^[1]

Putin was born in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) to a working-class family, and practised judo from an early age. He graduated with a law degree from Leningrad State University in 1975.^[2] In the Soviet era he was a member of the KGB (1975–1991), rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel stationed in East Germany, and in the 1990s worked as the deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg and for the Kremlin. He was married to Lyudmila Putina, née Shkrebneva, from 1983 to 2014, and they have two daughters, Maria Putina (born 1985) and Yekaterina Putina (born 1986).^[3]

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