Vladimir Putin forcefully returns to the world stage due to the war in Ukraine. We retrace his past and shed light on the man behind the politician: from sports passions to private life
While the war rages between Russia e Ukraine, the name of Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, as well as one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the world. Despite the great political experience and the several years in which the Russian leader is in power, many, especially outside Russia, know little or nothing about his career and his private life. Let’s try to shed some light on the man behind the politician.
Biography and political career
Born in Leningrad on 7 October 1952, Vladimir Putin studied at St. Petersburg State University, graduating in 1975. For 16 years he worked as an official of the KGB making a career up to the rank of colonel, before resigning in 1991 to start his own political career. Moving to Moscow in 1996, he joined the president’s administration Boris Eltsin serving as director of the FSB (agency that replaced the KGB), then becoming prime minister in August 1999. With Yeltsin’s resignation, Putin became his successor.
From his first term as president, Putin managed to grow the Russian economy for 8 consecutive years with GDP at purchasing power parity increased by 72%. Those were the years of the economic boom for Russia and the recovery after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Not being able, according to the Constitution, to hold a third consecutive term, Putin favored the election of his dolphin Dmitry Medvedev, who then appointed Putin himself as Prime Minister in 2008. In 2012 Putin was able to run again and won the elections with 64% of the votes. This time, due to international sanctions imposed after the Crimean crisis in 2014 and military intervention in eastern Donbass, they led to a 3.7% reduction in Russian GDP in 2015. In 2018 he was still re-elected for a 6-year term ( until 2024) with 76% of the votes.
Photo by Alexei Druzhinin / Epa / Ansa
Putin’s Russia: from accusations of authoritarianism to the war in Ukraine
Under the guidance of Putin, the Russia it has not been recognized as a true democracy. In fact, experts tend to underline a gradual process of democratic retreat due to purges, imprisonment and killings of political opponents, limitations on personal freedoms, censorship of the press, lack of credibly free and fair elections. In 2017 Amnesty International condemned Putin and the Russian government for excluding the democratic leader from the candidacy and imprisoning Aleksej Naval’nyj, despite being the most popular candidate in the polls. In November 2018, the European Court of Human Rights sentenced Russia to compensate Navalny with 50,000 euros for moral damages, 1,025 euros for material damage and 12,653 euros for the expenses incurred for his multiple arrests on Russian territory, assessed as politicians, against freedom of expression and lacking a real motivation.
Recently Putin has returned to show his most ferocious face in the events taking place in Ukraine. The interest of the Russian leader is to prevent Ukraine from entering the Then, ending up losing a strategic territory in the geopolitical chessboard that would see Russia increasingly “isolated” from the growing territorial advance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Putin did not hesitate to move militarily with air raids and bombings all over Ukraine, putting the capital on fire Kiev after recognizing the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donbass.
Photos at Alexei Nikolsky / Ansa
The president’s women: 2 marriages and 4 children
There have been two women in Putin’s private life. The first marriage took place on July 28, 1983 with Lyudmila Skrebneva, born in Kaliningrad on January 6, 1958, at the time a student of Spanish philology at Leningrad State University. The two daughters Marija Putina (1985) and Ekaterina Putin (1986) were born from the union of the two. The two girls studied at the Deutsche Schule Moskau, a German school in Moscow. Putin and Lyudmila separated in June 2013. The Russian leader is currently linked to a new partner, the Olympic gold medal gymnast, Alina Kabaeva. There with the new flame, 31 years younger, Putin had two other children: Dimitry, born in 2009 and a girl born in 2012.
Photo Ansa
Traditions, curiosity and love for animals
There are several traditions and curiosities regarding the private life of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president is a fervent one Orthodox Christian and was secretly baptized by his mother as a child. He never spends the Orthodox Christmas celebrations privately, but on the night between 6 and 7 January he goes to church with the faithful: in the past he also celebrated the feast in Yakutia, Sochi and in the regions of Tver and Voronezh, Veliky Novgorod and native St. Petersburg.
Since 2005 he never misses an opportunity to eat a gelato at the annual MAKS aviation salon: the first time he bought two ice cream cones for 15 rubles. Later it also began to offer ice cream to its guests, including Turkish President Recep Tayyp Erdogan among the latest ones.
In 2008, President Putin was given a very special birthday present: a tiger cub dell’Ussuri. From that moment on, his passion for animals seems to have strengthened. Two years later, the head of the Kremlin was filmed feeding a newborn moose, while shortly after, during an expedition to the North Pole, he gifted a polar bear of a satellite tracking collar. In 2012, Putin flew a group of Siberian white cranes to show them the way of the new migration. Putin was also photographed with a Orlov horse (typical breed of Russia) and a Taigan puppy (a greyhound breed from Kyrgyzstan).
In 2019, the AliExpress website sold tons of units of one white cup in the style of what the Russian president showed at the G20. Putin showed off his personal one “mug” on other official occasions such as press conferences and institutional meetings, launching a kind of fashion. According to his spokesman Putin “always drinks tea from this thermos“.
Photo by Alexei Nikolsky / Ria Novo / Ansa
Sports passions: judo matches, diving and hiking
Vladimir Putin he is always in great shape and plays various sports. At the age of 11 she started taking lessons judo. His teacher remembers: “when he started training, he had no particular talent and did not stand out from other students. But over time, he has shown impressive results. On the mat, Vladimir was a panther, always fighting to the last second“. Putin was particularly good at throwing techniques (Nage-waza) and at 21 he became Leningrad judo championreceiving the title of maestro. In 1999 the book “We study judo with Vladimir Putin“, And Putin also participated in a video tutorial on the basics of sport. In addition to judo he excels in other martial arts including karate, in which he holds the 8th dan (rank).
More recent the passion forhockey. In January 2011 he promised some young people, during the XXV Winter Universiade in Turkey, to try to learn to skate. “I thought it was simply impossible“Said the president. “I had already tried it once, while practicing martial arts“. Putin learned the fundamentals together with the award-winning Russian hockey player, World Cup winner, Aleksej Kasatonov. “I talked to a 12 year old boy, and he told me he had been skating for nine! It took me two months. I learned to skate while holding a chair! I had never skated before, I couldn’t even stand on skates“, He confessed Putin. By April 2011, Putin had by now learned to skate and play hockey and had even scored some goals, starting to play in the Russian Night Hockey Leaguein which he is joined by Russian politicians and businessmen who play hockey to raise money for charity.
Putin is also capable of ski. His personal trainer is the famous former downhill skier Leonid Tjagachev describing the president’s technique better than that of an average amateur: “Vladimir Putin did not follow the usual training course. At first, he kept making the same mistakes. But in two years we have improved his technique. Now he has very good foundations and always goes down at a very high speed. We trained at night, on artificially lit courses. We usually started at midnight and finished at 1 or 2 in the morning. We still train often at night today“.
Putin loves the mountains not just for skiing. The president is also a huge hiking enthusiast. In Tuva, a Siberian republic north of Mongolia, the birthplace of Defense Minister Sergej Shojgù, Putin went on long mountain walks together with the minister and FSB director Aleksandr Bortnikov. In 2018, the 3 hiked the hills of the Sajano-Shushenski Nature Reserve. “We crossed the Yenisei River on a speedboat and scrambled up. We went some places on foot, others by helicopter, but up the mountains we always walked a lot on foot. Vladimir Putin covers long distances with ease “he has declared Gennadij Kiselevdirector of the Sajano-Shushenski reserve.
Not only the mountains, but also the sea. In 2011 Putin dived into Taman Bay to see the renowned “Russian Atlantis“, The submerged part of the ancient Greek city of Fanagoria, in the Taman peninsula. In 2011, together with Dmitry Medvedev, he went to the Astrakhan region (Southern Russia) for a swim in the Volga, while in 2017 he went spearfishing in Tuva.
Tuva is one of Putin’s favorite places to fish with a fishing rod as well. In 2013 he caught a 21 kg pike. “I love to fish and am always happy to have the precious opportunity to sit with a fishing rod in my hands. Sometimes my work helps. If it weren’t for that, how could I have gone fishing in America with two presidents of the United States?“, Putin said in the past, then underlining how Russia is the best place to fish:”frankly, I must say that for me the best fishing in the world is the one in the Murmansk region and the Volga delta in the Astrakhan region“, has explained Putin.
Photos at Alexei Nikolsky / Sputnik / EPA / Ansa
