Vladimir Putin: How a KGB agent rose to the top of the Kremlin

THE Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, on October 7, 1952. He had two brothers who died before he was born. His brother Viktor lost his life when Nazi forces besieged Leningrad during World War II.

His grandfather, as he has said in interviews, worked as a cook for Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Putin grew up in Leningrad, where he trained in martial arts and studied law at university.

Working for the KGB: Stealing NATO Secrets in East Germany

Putin, after graduating from Leningrad State University in 1975, immediately joined the Soviet intelligence service, also known as the KGB. “I was highly motivated. I believed that I could use my abilities for the betterment of society,” wrote the “Washington Post” in 2000.

He was stationed in Dresden in 1985, where he searched for East Germans who had legitimate reasons to travel abroad and then recruited them to help spy on the West. Unconfirmed reports also have Putin working in New Zealand in the 1980s. During his time in the KGB, he worked as a case officer and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Putin returned to Leningrad in 1990 as the USSR was on the brink of collapse. He became an advisor to one of his former law professors, Mr Anatoly Sobchakwho eventually left to become the chairman of the Leningrad city council and later the city’s first democratically elected mayor.

In 1996 he moved to Moscow and began working in the Kremlin, where he was eventually appointed head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) – the successor to the KGB – in 1998.

Just a year later he was appointed one of Russia’s first deputy prime ministers and then caretaker prime minister by President Boris Yeltsin.

When President Yeltsin resigned, he became acting president and was officially elected president in March 2000. A few months after taking office, President Putin was criticized for his handling of the Kursk submarine affair, which sank on August 12, 2000, which claimed the lives of all 118 crew members and caused an international outcry.

Mr Putin initially chose to continue his holiday in Sochi and let days pass before receiving international aid. On October 23, 2002, 40 Chechen fighters led by Movsar Barayev they took 912 hostages in Moscow’s Dubrovka theater. Three days later special forces were sent to resolve the situation after an unknown gas was pumped into the room and all the militants were killed, along with 130 hostages, including foreigners. The attack prompted President Putin to take tougher measures against Chechen separatists.

On October 7, 2006 – President Putin’s birthday – journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in the lobby of her apartment building. Before her death she had exposed corruption in the Russian military. Her killing led to claims that President Putin had not done enough to protect the media. He described the killing as “horribly cruel” and commented that her death caused more problems for the Kremlin than her work.

In November 2006, a former KGB agent who continued to work for MI6 after fleeing to the UK fell ill after meeting two fellow former KGB agents in a London hotel. Alexander Litvinenko, a British citizen, had strongly criticized President Putin. He died a martyr’s death, after being poisoned with tea. From his deathbed he accused the Russian president of ordering his assassination, but the Kremlin has always denied any role.

In 2008, as his second term as prime minister came to an end, President Putin faced the problem of the Russian constitution, which prohibits anyone from serving three consecutive terms.

Instead, the first deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, was elected president and promptly appointed Putin prime minister, leading to the perception that power had not really changed hands.

In 2011, with Mr Putin again seeking re-election to the presidency, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest alleged election fraud. In March 2012 he was indeed re-elected president with 63.6% of the vote, in an election marred by allegations of fraud.

The rest is known about the Russian president and what followed. With the war in Ukraine, there are now strong signs that battlefield defeats for the Kremlin’s forces – particularly after the recent crash in Kharkiv and the defense forces’ advances towards Kherson – are beginning to affect Russian public opinion. for the war.

In a move described by many as desperate, Putin went on a partial mobilization, sending tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of troops to the front.

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