Vladimir Putin

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Vladimir Putin Владимир Путин
2nd President of the Russian Federation
Incumbent
Assumed office  December 31, 1999
Preceded by	Boris Yeltsin
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Prime Minister of Russia
In office August 8, 1999 – May 7, 2000
Preceded by	Sergei Stepashin
Succeeded by	Mikhail Kasyanov
Born	October 7, 1952 (age 54) Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg)
Political party	United Russia (not officially a member)
Spouse	Ludmila Putina
Religion	Russian Orthodox

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин (help·info)) (born October 7, 1952) is the incumbent President of Russia. He became Acting President of Russia on December 31, 1999, succeeding Boris Yeltsin, and was sworn in as President following the elections on May 7, 2000. In 2004 he was re-elected for the second (and the last under the current Constitution) term that expires in 2008.

Contents 1 Life and career 2 Family and personal life 3 Prime Minister and first term as President 4 Second term as President 5 Chechnya 6 Foreign policy 7 Press freedom and intimidation 8 Popular support 9 Putin miscellanea 9.1 Judo 9.2 Decorations 9.3 Plagiarism in dissertation 9.4 Anecdotes 9.5 Putin in humour and fiction 10 Quotations 10.1 Chechnya and terrorism 10.2 Democracy 10.3 Life in Russia 10.4 Foreign policy 11 See also 12 References and notes 13 External links

[edit] Life and career

Putin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in 1952. His biography, От Первого Лица (Romanization: Ot Pervogo Litsa), translated into English under the title First Person^[1] and based on interviews conducted with Putin in 2000 was paid for by his election campaign. It speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a rat-infested tenement in a communal apartment. According to his biography, in his youth he was eager to emulate the intelligence officer characters played on the Soviet screen by actors such as Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Georgiy Zhzhonov.

In the same book, Putin notes that his paternal grandfather, a chef by profession, was brought to the Moscow suburbs to serve as a cook, at one of Stalin's dachas. In "The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a footnote on page 300 cites Putin as saying that while his grandfather did not discuss his work very often, he recalled serving meals to Rasputin as a boy and also prepared food for Lenin. His mother was a factory worker and his father was conscripted into the navy, where he served in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. His father subsequently served with the land forces during the Second World War. Two older brothers were born in the mid-1930s; one died within a few months of birth; the second succumbed to diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad.

Putin graduated from the International Department of the Law Faculty of the Leningrad State University in 1975 and was recruited into the KGB. In First Person, Putin described to journalists his early duties in the KGB, which included suppressing dissident activities in Leningrad.

From 1985 to 1990 the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany, in what he regards as a minor position. Following the collapse of the East German regime, Putin was recalled to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1990 he assumed a position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to the Vice-Rector. In June 1991, he was appointed head of the International Committee of the St Petersburg Mayor's office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments.

Putin formally resigned from the state security services on August 20, 1991, during the KGB-supported abortive putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1994 he became First Deputy Chairman of the city of Saint Petersburg, a position he retained until he was called to Moscow, in August 1996, to serve in a variety of senior positions in Boris Yeltsin's second Administration. He was the first civilian head of the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB) from July 1998 to August 1999, and also served as Secretary of the Security Council from March to August 1999.

During the 1990s, Putin received a graduate level degree in economics from a mining institute in St Petersburg. His dissertation was titled "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations".

[edit] Family and personal life

Putin is married to Lyudmila Putina, a former airline stewardess and teacher of German, who was born in Kaliningrad, (formerly Königsberg). They have two daughters, Maria (born 1985) and Yekaterina (Katya) (born 1986 in Dresden). The daughters attended the German School in Moscow (Deutsche Schule Moskau) until his appointment as prime minister.

Putin is a practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Alexius II. His conversion, which most observers agree was sincere, followed a life-threatening fire at his dacha in the early 1990s. Very unusual for communist Russia, his mother had been a regular church-goer. His father was a communist and atheist (although he seems not to have objected to his wife's beliefs).

Putin speaks German with near-native fluency. His family used to speak German at home as well. He also speaks passable English.

[edit] Prime Minister and first term as President

Putin was appointed Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Boris Yeltsin in August 1999, making him Russia's fifth prime minister in less than eighteen months. On his appointment, few expected Putin, a virtual unknown, to last any longer than his predecessors. Yeltsin's main opponents and would-be successors, Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov and former Chairman of the Russian Government Yevgeniy Primakov, were already campaigning to replace the ailing president, and fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a potential successor. Putin's law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the renewed crisis in Chechnya (see below) soon combined to raise his popularity and allowed him to overtake all rivals. While not formally associated with any party, Putin was supported by the newly formed Edinstvo (unity) faction, which won the largest percentage of the popular vote in the December 1999 Duma elections. Putin was reappointed as Chairman of the Government, and seemed ideally positioned to win the presidency in elections due the following summer.

His rise to Russia's highest office ended up being even more rapid: on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the constitution, Putin was appointed as the second (acting) President of the Russian Federation. While his opponents were preparing for an election later that year in the fall, Yeltsin's resignation resulted in the elections being held right away, in March. This put all of his opponents at a disadvantage, giving him the element of surprise and an eventual victory. Presidential elections were held on March 26, 2000; Putin won in the first round. Later Putin granted the former president and his family full immunity from prosecution (via presidential decree). Shortly before, Yeltsin and his family had been under scrutiny for charges related to money-laundering by the Russian and Swiss authorities.

[edit] Second term as President

On March 14, 2004, Putin won re-election to the presidency for a second term, earning 71 percent of the vote. Both the election campaign and the balloting were declared "free and fair" by an international observation mission run by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

On September 13, 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis, and nearly-concurrent Chechen terrorist attacks in Moscow, Putin launched an initiative to replace the election of regional governors with a system whereby they would be proposed by the President and approved or disapproved by regional legislatures. Opponents of this measure, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Colin Powell, criticised it as a step away from democracy in Russia and a return to the centrally run political apparatus of the Soviet era.[1]

A significant amount of Putin's second term has been focused on domestic issues. According to various Russian and western media reports, Putin is extremely concerned about the ongoing demographic problems (death rate being higher than birth rate and immigration rate), cyclical poverty, and housing concerns within the Russian Federation. In 2005, four "national projects" were launched in the fields of healthcare, education, housing and agriculture. In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin proposed increasing maternity benefits and prenatal care for women. Putin has also been quite strident about the need to reform the judiciary. He refers to the federal judiciary as being "Sovietesque" and wants a judiciary that interprets and implements the code rather than the current situation, where many of the judges hand down the same verdicts as they would have under the old Soviet judiciary structure. In 2005, the responsibility for the federal prisons was transferred from the Interior Ministry to the Ministry of Justice.

One of the most controversial aspects of Putin's second term was the prosecution of Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, President of Yukos oil company, for fraud and tax evasion. While much of the international press saw this as a reaction against a man who was funding political opponents of the Kremlin, both liberal and Communist, the Russian government has argued that Khodorkovsky was in fact engaged in corrupting a large segment of the Duma to prevent changes in the tax code aimed at taxing windfall profits and closing offshore tax evasion vehicles. Certainly, many of the initial privatizations, including that of Yukos, are widely believed to have been fraudulent (Yukos, valued at some $30bn in 2004, had been privatized for $110 million), and like the other oligarchic groups, the Yukos-Menatep name has been frequently tarred with accusations of links to criminal organizations.

In the recent years, the political philosophy of Putin's administration has been described as «sovereign democracy». The political term recently gained wide acceptance within Russia itself and unified various political elites around it. According to its supporters, policy of the President must above all be supported by the popular majority in Russia itself and not be governed from outside of the country; such popular support constitutes the founding principle of a democratic society.^{[2] [3]}

[edit] Chechnya

See also: Second Chechen War.

Putin's rise to public office in August 1999 coincided with an aggressive resurgence of the near-dormant conflict in the North Caucasus, when Chechen nationalists regrouped and invaded neighbouring Daghestan. Both in Russia and abroad, Putin's public image was forged by his tough handling of this dire challenge ^{[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]}. During the autumn 1999 campaign for the Duma, Kremlin-controlled or allied media accused Putin's chief rivals of being soft on terrorism. On assuming the role of acting President on December 31, 1999, Putin proceeded on a previously scheduled visit to Russian troops in Chechnya; one of the earliest images Russians saw of their new leader was the acting president presenting hunting knives to soldiers. Throughout the winter of 2000, Putin's government regularly claimed that victory was at hand. In recent years, Putin has distanced himself from the management of the continuing conflict. In 2003, a referendum was held in Chechnya adopting a new constitution which declares the Republic as a part of Russia. The situation has been gradually stabilised with the parliamentary elections and the establishment of a government loyal to Moscow.

[edit] Foreign policy

In international affairs, Putin has been trying, not without success, to re-establish the strong and independent role once played by the Soviet Union, without, however, returning to the cold-war relations with the West. On the contrary, Putin's Russia has been seeking stronger and more constructive ties with Europe and the US. Thus, Russia has become a full-fledged member of the G8 and is currently chairing the Group. At the same time, Putin's attention was equally focused on Asia, in particular China and India.

While President Putin is criticized as an autocrat by some of his Western counterparts^{[citation needed]}, his relationships with US President George W. Bush, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, French President Jacques Chirac, and the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are reported to be friendly. Putin's relationship with Germany's new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is expected to be "cooler" and "more business-like" than his partnership with Gerhard Schröder [2].

Putin surprised many Russian nationalists and even his own defense minister when, in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States, he agreed to the establishment of coalition military bases in Central Asia before and during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Russian nationalists objected to the establishment of any US military presence on the territory of the former Soviet Union, and had expected Putin to keep the US out of the Central Asian republics, or at the very least extract a commitment from Washington to withdraw from these bases as soon as the immediate military purpose had passed.

During the Iraq crisis of 2003, Putin opposed Washington's move to invade Iraq without the benefit of a United Nations Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force. After the official end of the war was announced, American president George W. Bush asked the United Nations to lift sanctions on Iraq. Putin supported lifting of the sanctions in due course, arguing that the UN commission first be given a chance to complete its work on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In 2005, Putin and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder negotiated the construction of a major oil pipeline over the Baltic exclusively between Russia and Germany. Schröder also attended Putin's 53rd birthday in Saint Petersburg the same year.

During his time in office, Putin has attempted to strengthen relations with other members of the CIS. The "near abroad" zone of traditional Russian influence has again become a foreign policy priority under Putin, as the EU and NATO have grown to encompass much of Central Europe and, more recently, the Baltic states. While tacitly accepting the enlargement of NATO into the Baltic states, Putin attempted to increase Russia's influence over Belarus and Ukraine.

It is difficult to say whether these moves have been successful or not. During the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, Putin visited Ukraine twice before the election to show his support for Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and congratulated him on his alleged victory before the official election results had been announced. Putin's direct support for pro-Russian Yanukovych was widely criticized as unwarranted interference in the affairs of post-Soviet Ukraine. More recently, a crisis has emerged in Russia's relations with Georgia and Moldova, both former Soviet republics accusing Moscow of supporting separatist entities in their territories.

[edit] Press freedom and intimidation

Since early 1990s, a number of Russian reporters who have covered contentious stories on Russia's campaign in Chechnya, organized crime, state and administrative officials, and large businesses have been murdered. The Committee to Protect Journalists asserts that Russia has become the third most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist. [3] [4] On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who ran a campaign exposing corruption in the Russian army and its conduct in Chechnya, was shot to death. When asked about Politkovskaya murder, Putin said that it brought much more harm to the Russian authorities than her publications.^[12] According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, she was the thirteenth journalist to be killed in Russia in 2006.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Putin "has brought much of the once thriving post-Soviet media under indirect government control through the use of punitive tax audits and hostile takeovers. All three major television networks are now in the hands of Kremlin loyalists."[5] (Nationwide television networks in question are «First channel» also known as ORT, «Russia» and NTV.) Since Putin started his term in office, pressure started mounting on mass media companies owned by oligarchs. Boris Berezovsky was forced to part with his majority stock in ORT. Ownership of NTV was transferred from Vladimir Gusinsky to «Gazprom» to cover debts. After this, broadcasting of TV-6 (TVC) was terminated — the latter being a TV channel owned by Boris Berezovsky, to which a group of former NTV journalists was transferred. Critics is evoked by some Western and Russian media ^{[13] [14]} and some Western non-governmental organizations ^[15]. At the same time, according to 2005 research conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), the share of Russians approving censorship on TV has grown in a year from 63% to 82%; sociologists believe that Russians are not voting in favor of press freedom suppression, but rather for expulsion of ethically doubtful material (such as scenes of violence and sex).^[16]

[edit] Popular support

Although many reforms taken in modern Russia under Putin’s rule were generally criticized by Western media, "neither the Russian nor the American publics are convinced Russia is headed in an anti-democratic direction" and "Russians generally support Putin’s concentration of political power and strongly support the re-nationalization of Russia’s oil and gas industry", as shown in a joint poll by World Public Opinion in the U. S. and the Levada Center in Russia, in June-July 2006. Moreover, Russians generally support reforms initiated by Putin's team.

According to a public opinion survey conducted in July 2006 by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center — VCIOM — Putin enjoyed support of 87% of all Russians in his home country, while 60% of them had full confidence in him by the time of the survey being conducted.^[17] This is one of the highest job approval ratings among world leaders of his scale as of the year 2006.^[18]

[edit] Putin miscellanea

[edit] Judo

Putin works out regularly, spending much of his free time exercising.^{[citation needed]} One of Putin's favorite sports is the martial art of judo. Putin began sambo (Soviet martial art developed for Red Army and NKVD) at the age of 14, before switching to judo, which he continues to study today.^[19] Putin won competitions in his hometown of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), including the senior championship of Leningrad. He is President of the Yawara Dojo, the same St. Petersburg dojo he studied at as a youth. Putin co-authored a book on his favorite sport, published in Russian as Judo with Vladimir Putin and in English under the title Judo: History, Theory, Practice.^[20]

Though he is not the first world leader to practice judo, Putin is the first leader to move forward in the advanced levels. Currently, Putin is a black belt (6th dan) and is best known for his Harai goshi, a sweeping hip throw.^[21]

After a state visit to Japan, Putin was invited to the Kodokan Institute and showed the students and Japanese officials different judo techniques.^[21]

Vladimir Putin is Master of Sports (Soviet and Russian sport title) in Judo and Sambo .

Vladimir Putin is also a fan of Thoroughbred horse racing and often attends races at racecourses throughout Russia.

[edit] Decorations

In September 2006, France's president Jacques Chirac awarded Vladimir Putin the dignity of the Grand Cross of the Legion d'Honneur, the French highest decoration, to celebrate his contribution to the friendship between the two countries. This decoration is usually awarded to the heads of state considered as very close to France.

[edit] Plagiarism in dissertation

Vladimir Putin has been accused of plagiarism by fellows Clifford Gaddy and Igor Danchenko at the Brookings Institution. As alleged in the article by The Washington Post, "large chunks of Putin's economics dissertation on planning in the natural resources sector were lifted straight out of a management text published by two University of Pittsburgh academics nearly 20 years earlier."^[22]

[edit] Anecdotes

• On June 28, 2005, Putin made headlines in an unusual incident involving a New England Patriots Super Bowl XXXIX championship ring. Three days earlier Putin had met with U.S. business executives, including Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Near the end of the meeting Kraft showed Putin the ring, which features 124 diamonds, and the president was clearly impressed. At this point Kraft handed the ring to Putin who tried it on for a moment, then slipped it into his pocket and promptly left. The event caused a brief stir as the New York Sun [6] and other news outlets suggested that Kraft had not intended to give away the very valuable ring. Kraft, who has Russian ancestors, later told the Associated Press that he gave the ring to Putin as a gift and token of respect. [7]
• On October 19, 2006, Putin reportedly made disturbing remarks to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel about Israeli President Moshe Katsav. Putin was quoted as saying, "Say hello to your president. He really surprised us...turned out to be quite a mighty man. He raped 10 women. I never expected it from him. He surprised all of us. We all envy him."[8] Other news agencies (AP, AFP) reported a milder version of Putin's words: «Say hello to your president - he surprised us all. We could not even imagine that he can make it [or cope] with 10 women». ^[23] It was later confirmed that he actually said "had ten women" [9] In a call-in television programme Putin did not deny making the comment but said that using instruments such as protecting women’s rights to resolve political issues that are unconnected with this problem is absolutely inadmissible. And this is because it actually discredits the struggle for women’s rights. He also criticised the press's 'eavesdropping' on his conversation with Olmert as 'unseemly'.[10]

• On June 28, 2006 Putin, while walking by a small crowd of tourists in a Kremlin courtyard, gave a "belly kiss" to a young boy of five or six years old. As he talked with the boy for a few seconds, he tugged at the boy's shirt before finally lifting it up and kissing him on his bare stomach. This raised a few eyebrows around the world. In response to the controversy, the Russian president said, "He was very sweet. I'll be honest, I felt an urge to cuddle him like a kitten and that led to the gesture that I made. There was nothing behind it really."
• In a transcript published July 12, 2006, Putin is reported to have responded to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's political criticism by saying, "I think the statements of your Vice-President of this sort are the same as an unsuccessful hunting shot."[11] U.S. President George W. Bush later remarked that the comment was "pretty clever, actually, quite humorous." [12]
• During the 32nd G8 summit in July of 2006, Putin said at a press conference, "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly." in response to Bush's accusations of the decline of democracy in modern Russia.
• Also during the 32nd G8 summit, following journalists' criticisms of the Russian government's record on Human rights, Putin was quoted as remarking that, "There are also other questions, questions let's say about the fight against corruption. We'd be interested in hearing your experience, including how it applies to Lord Levy." Lord Levy, a member of the British House of Lords, had been arrested (and bailed) the previous week in relation to the "Cash for Peerages" police inquiry into the soliciting of financial donations to British political parties in return for honours. [13]

[edit] Putin in humour and fiction

• The weekly TV show Kukly used puppets representing the most recognizable and powerful Russian politicians, including a puppet-president, to satirize current events. The show was aired on NTV channel from 1994 to 2002. The success of Kukly was to a great extent due to its scriptwriter Victor Shenderovich.
• Short humorous stories about Vladimir Vladimirovich's everyday life and work Vladimir Vladimirovich™ are regularly published by journalist Maxim Kononenko, popularly known under the sobriquet "Mr. Parker". In these essays, often alluding to contemporary events, Parliament is depicted as consisting of androids, a Deputy Chief of Staff being both their constructor and programmer; Vladimir Vladimirovich is fond of collecting things concerned with key historical events or people, etc. A collection of these stories, thoroughly commented, was published as a book in August 2005. German and English versions of these anecdotes are available as well. Kononenko wrote that some of these stories were brought to Putin.
  • Screen versions of the Vladimir Vladimirovich™ series are shown in a weekly analytical programme "Realnaya politika" with Gleb Pavlovsky, aired on NTV channel (although the androids are not shown).
• Andrey Dorofeev's vision of Putin compares Putin (a former KGB agent) to Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the KGB.
• In the South Park episode Free Willzyx, Putin is shown as a president that badly needs money for the Russian economy. He is shown to be extremely excited when he is asked to fly a whale to the moon for 20 million dollars as this money will save Russia.
• Several comedic sources have commented on the fact that Putin bears a resemblance to Dobby from the film version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
• On his show, The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert announced his support for Putin in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

[edit] Quotations

[edit] Chechnya and terrorism

• Putin on Chechen extremists, on September 24, 1999: "We'll follow terrorists everywhere. We will corner the bandits in the toilet and wipe them out." ("мочить в сортире" in Russian):^[24]
• In response to those who called Putin to enter talks with Chechen separatists after the Beslan school hostage crisis, in September, 2004: "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers? No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to childkillers."^[25]

In 2003 Putin said:

"Yes, life in Chechnya so far looks more like a life after a natural disaster."

"People in Chechnya — just as throughout Russia — must have the possibility to live normally, to have rest and leisure and medical treatment and to raise and educate their children." [14]

[edit] Democracy

At the joint press conferess with President George Bush in 2005, Slovakia, Putin said:

"Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy. Fourteen years ago, independently, without any pressure from outside, it made that decision in the interests of itself and interests of its people — of its citizens. This is our final choice, and we have no way back. There can be no return to what we used to have before. And the guarantee for this is the choice of the Russian people, themselves. No, guarantees from outside cannot be provided. This is impossible. It would be impossible for Russia today. Any kind of turn towards totalitarianism for Russia would be impossible, due to the condition of the Russian society."

From interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France), taken on July 12, 2006:

"I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence."

"First, we are working hard now on creating a genuine multiparty system. {...} Second, we are redistributing powers between the federal, regional and municipal authorities."

[edit] Life in Russia

In 2005 Putin said:

"I will recall once more Russia’s most recent history.

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.

Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation that followed damaged the country's integrity. Oligarchic groups — possessing absolute control over information channels — served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere.

Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system.

But they were mistaken.

That was precisely the period when the significant developments took place in Russia. Our society was generating not only the energy of self-preservation, but also the will for a new and free life." [15]

From Putin's Annual Address to the Federal Assembly on May 10, 2006:

"We have spoken on many occasions of the need to achieve high economic growth as an absolute priority for our country. The annual address for 2003 set for the first time the goal of doubling gross domestic product within a decade."

"Russia must realise its full potential in high-tech sectors such as modern energy technology, transport and communications, space and aircraft building."

[edit] Foreign policy

• After saying the US shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place: "But if the U.S. were to leave and abandon Iraq without establishing the grounds for a united and sovereign country, that would definitely be a second mistake." [16]
• "Russia’s modern foreign policy is based on the principles of pragmatism, predictability and the supremacy of international law."
• "I stress that we unambiguously support strengthening the non-proliferation regime, without any exceptions, on the basis of international law." [17]

[edit] See also

• Speeches by the President at the official website.
• Interview with NBC TV channel taken on July 12, 2006, before G8 summit.
• Comrade Wolf

[edit] References and notes

[edit] External links

• The official site of the President of the Russian Federation
• Artiom Malgin, Jaroslav Skvortsov, Alexandr Tchechevishnikov (Moscow State Institute of International Relations, MGIMO); published by the Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies, Warsaw: Aims, Priorities and Tasks: Attempt at a Systematic Analysis of the Presidential Speeches In Russia (2000 – 2005); XV Economic Forum Krynica 7-10 September, 2005
• The Accidental Autocrat, in The Atlantic Monthly, March 2005 (may require subscription)
• Russia's Foreign Policy in a resurgent mode: An Analysis
• Transcript of the Interactive Webcast with the President, held on July 7, 2006 (BBC version).
• RussianSpy: Vladimir Putin
• BBC – Vladimir Putin: Spy turned politician
• Putin and his judo activities
• Transcript of an interview with Larry King, September 2000
• Vladimir.Vladimirovich.ru political satire site
• www.noputin.com
• Vladimir Putin Fan Club
• Petroleum Music composition is devoted to Putin V.V.
• Anatol Lieven. "Putin versus Cheney", International Herald Tribune, May 11, 2006.

Preceded by: Nikolai Dmitrievich Kovalev	Director of FSB 1998-1999	Succeeded by: Nikolay Patrushev
Preceded by: Sergei Stepashin	Prime Minister of Russia August 8, 1999–May 7, 2000	Succeeded by: Mikhail Kasyanov
Preceded by: Boris Yeltsin	President of Russia December 31, 1999 – present	Incumbent
Preceded by: Tony Blair	Chair of the G8 2006	Succeeded by: (Angela Merkel is expected to succeed)

Presidents of the Russian Federation
Boris Yeltsin • Vladimir Putin

G8 Leaders
Stephen Harper | Jacques Chirac | Angela Merkel | Romano Prodi | Shinzo Abe | Vladimir Putin | Tony Blair | George W. Bush

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