Russia-Ukraine conflict: who is Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who ordered the invasion of Ukraine?

But how did it get there? Here is a look back at the political and personal life of this divisive character, who is currently making headlines around the world.

Critics see in Mr Putin traits of the Soviet era that shaped his worldview.

He served as a spy for the KGB – the infamous Soviet security agency – before rising to a meteoric rise in the chaos of the collapse of the USSR.

Many of his close associates and friends have, or had, ties to the secret services.

Mr Putin’s political career began in the early 1990s, when he worked as a senior assistant to the mayor of St Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, who had previously taught him law at university.

In 1997, he entered the Kremlin as head of the Federal Security Service (FSB – the main successor to the KGB) and was quickly appointed Prime Minister.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigns and appoints Mr. Putin acting president.

He has been in power ever since, although Mr Putin had to serve as prime minister between 2008 and 2012 as the Russian constitution bars him from running for a third consecutive term.

Mr Putin duly returned to power by winning the 2012 elections with more than 66% of the vote, amid accusations of electoral fraud.

He reinstated Soviet-style pageantry for military parades, and portraits of Stalin, once banned, reappeared.

Even the Russian Covid vaccine is called Sputnik V, in reference to the Soviet Sputnik probe which became the world’s artificial satellite in 1957.

Mr. Putin described the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the world. [XXe] century” and he has frequently criticized NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders since 1997.

Previous tensions between Russia and Ukraine and Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in support of President Bashar al-Assad had already rekindled Western suspicion of Mr Putin.

Relations are as icy as they were during the Cold War, with the exception, however, of former US President Donald Trump, who has openly expressed his admiration for his Russian counterpart.

His successor, Joe Biden, meanwhile described Mr Putin as a “killer”.

Mr Putin appears to be relishing his macho image, aided by election stunts such as entering Chechnya in a fighter jet in 2000 and appearing at a Russian biker festival by the Black Sea in 2011.

But Mr Putin has also shown a softer side on Russian state media, cuddling his dogs and helping to care for endangered Amur tigers.

A poll conducted by the Russian Levada center in February 2021 indicates that 48% of Russians would like Mr Putin to remain president beyond 2024.

That figure would be the envy of many Western politicians, but it might suggest that many simply view Mr Putin as a safe bet.

He scored political points by keeping Russia relatively stable after the post-communist chaos of the 1990s.

Besides restoring widespread national pride, Mr. Putin has allowed a middle class to emerge and thrive, although Moscow still dominates the economy and rural poverty is rampant.

Its popularity among older Russians is significantly stronger than among young people. The latter grew up under Mr. Putin and many of them seem to be hungry for change.

In January 2021, thousands of young Russians demonstrated across the country in support of Putin’s nemesis Alexei Navalny, who was arrested immediately after returning from Berlin.

Navalny has made a name for himself by exposing rampant corruption, calling Mr Putin’s United Russia a “party of crooks and thieves”.

The protests that followed were among the largest Russia has seen in recent years. A police crackdown followed and thousands of people were arrested.

Another key reason why Mr Putin’s relationship with the West is so fractured is Navalny, currently in poor health in jail, controversially convicted in an old embezzlement case.

In August 2021, he narrowly survived an attack with the nerve agent Novichok, which Western governments later blamed on Mr Putin’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

Novichok – a Russian weapons-grade toxin – was also used to poison ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England in 2018.

Mr Putin has denied any connection to these and other attacks against prominent political opponents.

Vladimir Putin grew up in a communal apartment building in Leningrad – now St. Petersburg – and fought with the neighborhood boys, who were often bigger and stronger. This is what prompted him to take up judo.

According to the Kremlin website, Mr Putin wanted to work in the Soviet secret service “even before he finished his studies”.

“Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me a rule: if a fight is unavoidable, you must throw the first punch,” Putin said in October 2015.

He used the crude language of a street fighter to defend his military assault on separatist rebels in Chechnya, vowing to wipe them out “even in the toilet”.

The predominantly Muslim North Caucasian republic was devastated by heavy fighting between 1999 and 2000, which claimed thousands of civilian casualties.

Georgia is another hotspot for Mr. Putin. In 2008, his forces routed the Georgian army and seized two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

This very personal conflict with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, then pro-NATO, showed that Mr Putin was ready to undermine the pro-Western leaders of the former Soviet states.

Mr. Putin’s entourage is a fabulously wealthy elite and he himself is believed to possess immense wealth. He keeps his family and financial affairs well protected from publicity.

The Panama Papers leaks in 2016 revealed a murky web of offshore companies owned by a longtime friend of Mr Putin – cellist Sergei Roldugin.

Mr Putin and his wife Lyudmila divorced in 2013 after nearly 30 years of marriage. She described him as a workaholic.

According to an investigation by the Reuters news agency, one of Mr Putin’s daughters, Katerina, holds a high administrative position at Moscow State University and performs in rock ‘n’ acrobatic roll.

Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria, is an academic, specializing in endocrinology.

Mr. Putin’s brand of patriotism dominates the Russian media, which skews media coverage in his favor, making it difficult to gauge the extent of the opposition.

During his first two presidential terms, Mr Putin enjoyed significant revenues from oil and gas – Russia’s main exports.

The standard of living of most Russians has improved. But the price to pay, in the opinion of many, was the erosion of Russia’s young democracy.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Putin has struggled with an anemic economy, hit by recession and, more recently, by the collapse in the price of oil.

Russia has lost many foreign investors and billions of dollars in capital flight.

Mr. Putin’s reign was marked by conservative Russian nationalism.

It has strong echoes of Tsarist absolutism, encouraged by the Orthodox Church.

Shortly after taking the presidency, Mr. Putin set out to marginalize liberal figures, often replacing them with tougher allies or neutrals seen as mere yes-men.

So Yeltsin’s favourites, such as the oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, ended up as fugitives living in exile abroad.

International concern over human rights in Russia has grown over the years, following the imprisonment of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of the world’s richest billionaires, and anti-Putin activists from the punk band Pussy Riot.

Today, as Russia invades Ukraine and Putin warns that Moscow’s response will be ‘instantaneous’ if anyone tries to attack Russia, all eyes are on the Russian president to see what what he will do next.