Vladimir Putin: From Russia's KGB to a long presidency defined by war in Ukraine - BBC News

Vladimir Putin has been in power since 2000, longer than any Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin.

17 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/Pool/AFPBy Paul KirbyBBC NewsVladimir Putin has been in power since 2000, longer than any Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

As he prepares for a fifth term as president, aged 71, all semblance of opposition is gone and there is little to stop him staying on, if he wants, until 2036.

And yet, it was almost by accident that this little-known, former KGB man was hand-picked for the Kremlin. A case of being in the right place at the right time in predecessor Boris Yeltsin's inner circle.

Vladimir Putin was a street-fighting boy whose early years were spent in a communal flat, or kommunalka, in communist Leningrad.

Although he appeared to embrace liberal, democratic Russia, he later described the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union as "the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] Century".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15047823

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