Mr Putin and his wife of Lyudmila got divorced in after nearly 30 years of marriage. She described him as a workaholic. According to a Reuters news agency investigation, Mr Putin's younger daughter, Katerina, is thriving in academia , has a top administrative job at Moscow State University and performs in acrobatic rock 'n' roll competitions. The elder Putin daughter, Maria, is also an academic, specialising in endocrinology.
Reuters found that several other powerful figures close to Mr Putin - often ex-KGB - also have successful children in lucrative management jobs. He is passionate about ice hockey, like judo - and state TV has shown his skills on the ice. Mr Putin's brand of patriotism dominates Russia's media, skewing coverage in his favour, so the full extent of opposition is hard to gauge. Even in , as prime minister under President Dmitry Medvedev, he was clearly holding the levers of power.
In his first two terms as president, Mr Putin was buoyed by healthy income from oil and gas - Russia's main exports. Living standards for most Russians improved. But the price, in the opinion of many, was the erosion of Russia's fledgling democracy. Since the global financial crisis Mr Putin has struggled with an anaemic economy, hit by recession and more recently a plunge in the price of oil.
Russia lost many foreign investors and billions of dollars in capital flight. Mr Putin's rule has been marked by conservative Russian nationalism. It has strong echoes of tsarist absolutism, encouraged by the Orthodox Church. The Church supported a ban on groups spreading gay "propaganda" among teenagers.
Soon after becoming president Mr Putin set about marginalising liberals, often replacing them with more hardline allies or neutrals seen as little more than yes-men. Yeltsin favourites such as the oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky ended up as fugitives living in exile abroad. International concern about human rights in Russia grew with the jailing of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of the world's richest billionaires, and of anti-Putin activists from the punk group Pussy Riot.
Agents of the Russian state were accused of murdering him. Will Putin rule Russia forever? Russia-Turkey tension: How Putin acts in a crisis. Syria poses challenges for Putin. Russia's leaders in workout session.
Patriotic fervour on the rise in Russia. Putin reveals secret Crimea plot. The fates of Putin's enemies. Russian presidency. Image source, Getty Images. President Putin sometimes humiliates senior officials on state TV. Chris Weafer, chief executive officer of Moscow-based strategy consultancy Macro-Advisory, told CNBC in September that "the real issue which scares the Kremlin is the changing demographics," with an increasing number of Russians born after the Soviet Union ended and demanding a better standard of life.
Failure in the former will more severely undermine to latter in the next presidential term - no matter who that president may be. During his two decades in power, Putin has undoubtedly overseen a period of growth in the Russian economy. Likewise, on the political front, Russia still stands firmly on the global geopolitical stage. Like any economy, however, Russia has not been immune to global and domestic events — both under and out of Russia's control — that have unseated its growth trajectory and caused financial hardship to its citizens.
This was most evident in when a fall in global oil prices, combined with Russia's decision to annex Crimea from its neighbor Ukraine, put massive pressure on the economy and society. This was due to lower government revenues for oil-exporting Russia and newly-imposed international sanctions on the country for its Crimea land grab. The big decline in the ruble led to rampant inflation and prices on basic products soared, seriously affecting Russian consumers.
Most recently, the Covid pandemic also hit Russia's economy as hard, although it fared better than some developed economies. World Show more World. US Show more US. Companies Show more Companies. Markets Show more Markets. Opinion Show more Opinion. Personal Finance Show more Personal Finance. Culturally, it has often thought of itself as the third Rome, preserving Christianity even as Rome and Byzantium fell to the Barbarians.
Putin understands Russia. But he also understands the world. He is not foolish enough to make a frontal assault on America or Europe. Instead, he knows how to use power asymmetrically, with cyber tools and disinformation.
When rebellion arrived in Russia He also understands the vulnerabilities of free societies -- their internal divisions and discord, and their gaping openness. He understands the fragility of institutions like the European Union and ideas like integration and diversity. In other words, Vladimir Putin understands us very well.
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