Twenty years ago, Vladimir Putin took the helm of Russia at a time when the country was reeling from separatism, a deep economic crisis and decline as a world power
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th December, 2019) Twenty years ago, Vladimir Putin took the helm of Russia at a time when the country was reeling from separatism, a deep economic crisis and decline as a world power.Under his presidency, Russia stabilized the situation in the North Caucasus, stopped the economic downturn, rejoined with Crimea, successfully hosted the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi and the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Moscow has also attained a more powerful voice in the international arena, with the country becoming an indispensable power and mediator in resolving conflicts across the world.
Many problems still remain unresolved, prompting Putin to once and again focus on social problems and attempts to reinvigorate the economic growth. Over the past 20 years, Russia's foreign policy has also experienced great shifts - from the declared readiness to join NATO to the current estrangement from the West.
The future president was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad in a family of a World War II veteran. His father was wounded while defending the city, while his mother nearly died during the Nazi siege of Leningrad. The family also lost their son, Viktor, during the blockade of the hero city. The boy died of diphtheria.
According to his school teacher, Vera Gurevich, who taught him German, Putin was able to stand up for himself and fight back from an early age. He was a leader in the class and, despite the fact that until the sixth grade he was considered a "hooligan" at school, he always defended "justice," she said.
After graduating with a degree in law from Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University) in 1975, Putin started working for the KGB, the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union.
Putin once said that the dream to serve in the intelligence had come to him at school, mostly under the influence of romantic ideas about the work of intelligence officers he got from books and movies.
From 1985 to 1990, the future president served as KGB officer in Dresden, the German Democratic Republic.
Before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999, Putin held different positions - from an international affairs assistant to the rector of Leningrad State University to the director of the Federal Security Service.
In a New Year address on the eve of a new millennium, the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, unexpectedly announced his resignation, appointing Putin as acting head of state.
Former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that Yeltsin had long been thinking about a successor but eventually chose Putin, who was not like any of his predecessors.
Putin later recalled that he had first rejected Yeltsin's offer to take over as prime minister and subsequently run for presidency since he had not considered himself ready for such a fate.
"He was disciplined and fit, a practitioner of judo, and he inspired hope and confidence among Russians still reeling from so much political change and economic adversity," Hillary Clinton, an ex-US state secretary and a staunch opponent of Putin, wrote in her 2014 memoir.
ELEVATING RUSSIA FROM ECONOMIC CRISIS
In March 2000, Putin won the presidential election in the first round, inheriting the chaos that had been rocking Russia since the 1990s.
In the first years of his presidency, Putin focused on strengthening the central government. A number of key reforms, including tax, banking, land, housing and labor reforms, were conducted. Peace was finally established in conflict-torn Caucasus.
After the 2004 reelection, Putin continued his course to solve social problems - the law on maternity capital came into force; social benefits and military salaries were increased; and conscription was reduced to one year.
The strengthening of the "power vertical" continued. In September 2004, Putin scrapped direct elections of the heads of Russia's federal subjects (reinstated in 2011). Under the new scheme, governors were appointed by president with the subsequent approval by local legislative assemblies.
At the beginning of his first term, Putin set an ambitious goal of doubling GDP in 10 years. Over the eight years, this growth totaled about 70 percent, while industry grew by 75 percent.
The capital outflow, which used to amount to tens of billions of Dollars, has stopped. Investments have increased by 125 percent, and the ruble has become a freely convertible Currency.
From May 2008 to May 2012, Putin served as prime minister under then-President Dmitry Medvedev.
In May 2012, Putin was inaugurated for a six-year presidential term after winning the March election. The president began his tenure with the signing of the so-called May Decrees, a broad program of social guarantees and economic reforms. He also set a course to rejuvenate the governors' corps to ensure more effective regional management.
In May 2018, Putin took the oath of office as head of state for the fourth time, after being reelected with a record 76.69 percent of the vote. On the inauguration day, Putin signed a decree that laid the basis for 12 new national projects, aiming to bring the Russian economy into the world's top five. According to the president, all these measures are needed to improve Russians' well-being in the first place.
'MAN OF ACTION' & 'MANUAL CONTROL' HABIT
From the 1990s to 2000s, Russia went through rather dramatic events. One of such events was the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster, which killed all 118 crew members. The vessel sank in the Barents Sea after blasts onboard.
After the crisis, Putin arrived in the Murmansk Region to meet with relatives of the diseased sailors. He promised them that the vessel would be raised and he kept his word.
The president himself later admitted that the conversation had been difficult but very frank and open. People saw the sympathy and his willingness to work "to the maximum."
"Deeds are his thing," a friend of Putin's youth, cellist Sergei Roldugin, said.
During his first term, Putin launched his annual "Direct Line" Q&A sessions during which ordinary people have the opportunity to ask him a question by phone, in video address or online.
Many in the country see such sessions as the only chance to get their problems solved - a situation that at times prompts criticism of Putin's "manual control system" in Russia.
The president himself has said that he turns to such "manual" controls only when the system fails. He has had to apply this principle of work several times over the past 20 years. Most recently, this year, he traveled to the flood-affected Irkutsk region, where he personally talked with local residents to accelerate response and support measures.
Putin himself saw the hostage crises at a Moscow theatre during the musical Nord Ost in 2002 and at a school in Beslan 2004, both of which have claimed lives of hundreds of people, including many children, as the most dramatic moments of his entire career and life.
While Putin's views on social policy have mainly remained unchanged, his foreign policy vision made a shift during the very first years in office.
Initially, he believed that equal cooperation with the United States was possible.
However, the NATO enlargement, Iraq war, "orange revolutions" in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, the US reluctance to abandon the creation of a missile defense system in Europe, as well as conflicts in Syria and Libya forced him to reconsider his stance.
"It seems to me that our partners do not want allies. They want vassals, they want to rule. But Russia does not work that way," he once said.
The president's speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 is widely described as a milestone in Russia's reassessment of relations with the West.
Back then, Putin harshly criticized the US for trying to impose its will on other countries, opposed the NATO enlargement, declared the failure of the unipolar world in modern realities and stated that Russia would pursue an independent foreign policy.
After returning to presidency for his third term, Putin put a special focus on solving geopolitical problems. During that time span, Russia started constructing the Power of Siberia and TurkStream gas pipelines, the Eurasian Economic Union was developing, so were relations with Egypt, Vietnam and BRICS nations
Russia's fight against terrorism, meanwhile, reached an international level. At the request of Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2015, Russia launched a military operation in the country against terrorist groups. In addition to the Syrian settlement, Moscow took an active part in solving the Iranian nuclear problem, which all resulted in a significant increase in Russia's influence in the middle East.
Russia rather successfully hosted the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi during his third term. Finally, the reunification of Russia and Crimea in 2014 rightly became the country's main foreign policy achievement over recent years.
The foreign policy gains were, however, overshadowed by deteriorating relations with the US and Europe. The success at the Sochi Olympics was followed by a major international doping scandal, while the Crimea events triggered the West's sanctions war against Russia.
The president himself admitted that at first the sanctions pressure had caused anxiety. On the other hand, the sanctions spur the country to develop import substitution.
"In this sense, all these restrictions have benefited our economy," Putin said.
In his statements, Putin keeps reiterating that Russia remains open to a dialogue with the West but will respond to such unilateral moves as the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the INF Treaty. He pledges that Russia will not engage in arms race but will do everything to counter threats.
"The aggressor must know that retribution is inevitable, that it will be destroyed. And we, the victims of aggression, will go to heaven as martyrs, while they will just croak, because they will not even have time to repent," Putin said about those who would use nuclear weapons against Russia.
