Who is Vladimir Putin? | Start Here

let's talk about russia's president vladimir putin [Applause] his decision to invade ukraine has got a lot of people trying to figure out what's going through his mind why he did what he did and what he might do next it's impossible to know for sure but if we look back at his life and career it can help us connect some of the dots so here are five things that you need to know about vladimir putin that help explain who he is today and how he's shaped russia the first thing to know is that putin started his career in the kgb the secret intelligence service of the former soviet union that operated at home and abroad putin grew up in leningrad now st petersburg and even as a teenager in the 1960s he wanted to be a spy he first sort of knocked on the doors of soviet security services already when he was in school and he was sent away later putin would say that he'd been inspired by films and stories he'd heard about the kgb putin went on to study law at leningrad state university a stepping stone for wannabe spies in those days he graduated in 1975 and finally did join the kgb where he stayed until the early 90s when the agency dissolved with the collapse of the soviet union if we think about what putin carries with him from his kgb experience it's more that he was influenced by the kind of thinking that occurred towards the end of the 80s where it really wasn't about communist ideology or any higher goals it was more about power and money i would agree with saying that once again is all dependent the gp is a kind of mafia which operates in that age of the law and they do have the principle that ends justify means and you are not restricted either by institutions or by laws and some of the murkier political tactics that we've seen in russia under putin's watch come straight out of the old kgb playbook like assassinations and poisonings the murderer koski in a contract style killing provoked international condemnation of the kremlin one of vladimir putin's fiercest critics gunned down in broad daylight four bullets in the back in the very shadow of the kremlin uk inquiry into the death of a former russian spy in london says russian president vladimir putin probably approved the killing of alexander lidvanyenko now putin has always brushed off accusations that he's personally linked to these kinds of incidents but lots of experts say that doesn't really stack up given how the kremlin works any important moves made by the government or any other state organization they are either directly ordered by putin or allowed by putin now the second big thing to know about vladimir putin is how he feels about the collapse of the soviet union because that's really affected his world view it goes back to his time in the kgb in the mid-80s putin was posted to dresden in what was then east germany a soviet satellite state it's hard to know exactly what he did because there are different versions of the story and the kgb was so secretive but broadly speaking we know that he was a mid-level officer coordinating between the kgb and the stasi east germany's intelligence service now this was a time when everything was changing very quickly back home the soviet union was starting to unravel big protests were bringing down several communist governments in eastern europe and then in november 1989 the biggest symbol of the cold war divide between east and west the berlin wall came down what followed was a kind of free-for-all which soon reached dresden protesters there ransacked the stasi building and threatened to storm the kgb building across the street where putin was on duty he called a soviet army unit nearby to ask for help but was told we can't do anything without an order from moscow and moscow is silent and that response seems to have haunted putin ever since i had the feeling the country no longer existed that it had disappeared it was clear the union was ailing and it had a terminal disease without a cure a paralysis of power you had this soviet family young family that were to an extent privileged by living in east germany they had to return home to st petersburg and they didn't have anything to return to for people like putin who i imagine had his whole career set on working in the kgb for one of the world's great superpowers this must have been a very disorienting time by december 1991 the soviet union no longer existed in its place were 15 independent countries including russia led by president boris yeltsin and later when putin was president he summed up what he thought about it allah it was a chaotic time organized crime filled the power vacuum left by the crumbling soviet state russia suddenly went from having a highly controlled communist economy to an economy at the mercy of the free market there were some big winners like the oligarchs a small group of businessmen who got super rich by securing ownership of soviet state assets and rock bottom prices but for most ordinary russians life was really hard the economic hardships were very severe hyperinflation for two years that wiped out people's savings and great uncertainty about the future so here's the next thing to know about putin if we think about what a roller coaster in the 1990s were in russia putin got a lot of credit for restoring some order because after he became president in 2000 things really changed but first let's rewind and run through how we got to the top putin's trajectory to the position of the president of russian federation was the head of a rocket when putin got back from east germany he got a job working for the mayor of leningrad anatoly subjac who was his old law professor and putin developed a reputation for getting things done it was very effective and many of my friends businessmen said very often that it's a pleasure to deal with him because he is not this blah blah man he's doing business within a few years he became deputy mayor then self-check lost an election and putin was out of a job he went to moscow to join president yeltsin's administration he became deputy chief of staff director of the fsb a successor to the kgb and then yeltsin made putin his prime minister a month later a string of apartment bombings killed around 300 people the government blamed chechen separatists but some journalists and historians have suggested the fsb was involved and russia responded by invading chechnya putin was seen to be the guy in charge and his popularity soared the contrast with president yeltsin was stark yeltsin was ill and alcoholic and unpopular he was also seen as a puppet of the west and of the oligarchs on new year's eve 1999 yeltsin stepped down and named putin acting president three months later an election made it official there was a lot of rhetoric about bringing back order and stability and rebuilding the state and indeed the racketeers from the 1990s the bandits the killings the contract killings all this sort of tapered down putin also went after the oligarchs suddenly many of them found themselves charged for things like fraud and tax evasion the era of oligarchs when oligarchs were seen to be controlling the government was brought to an end which it was very clear in terms of who is controlling the situation and that oligarchs are not supposed to be part of politics now around this time in the early years of putin's presidency the russian economy started doing really well the prices of oil and other big russian exports were rising fast the economy grew an average of seven percent a year between 2000 and 2008 and the number of people living in poverty dropped by more than half when the living standards soar uh it's easy to understand why people thought you know putin was really a great uh politician so that's the backdrop to the mid-2000s putin's in charge he's popular and the economy is booming and that's when we start to understand more about putin's ambitions on the world stage which is the next thing you need to know putin wants to restore what he sees as russia's rightful place in the global order he's really a man with a mission he has a dream to build up on the post-service space something like a modernized unity of former soviet republics and which will be capable to defend their interests and to play a much more serious role in the international policy the problem for putin is that many of those former soviet countries especially in eastern europe don't share his dream many have been much keener on joining western clubs like the eu and nato and putin sees that as a threat to russia and his mission is his view is that the west is just going too far and that became obvious around 2004 with the color revolutions these were popular uprisings across the former soviet space in places like ukraine and georgia all of the sudden the kremlin was seeing the hand of the west trying to change the governments and that became quite threatening for the russian government the first bell was ringing at the famous munich conference in 2007 when this turned to confrontation started putin found ways to reassert russia's power and we saw that in the kremlin's decisions to invade former soviet territories like georgia in 2008. ukraine in 2014 when russia annexed the crimean peninsula and in ukraine again this year these moves seem to have been pretty popular among russians especially the annexation of crimea crimea added a strong sort of legitimacy to this rhetoric and proved in a way that russia is strong they saw in him a very powerful leader who promotes russian interests abroad who in a way crafts a sense of belonging to russia in a very positive way so that people are not ashamed anymore they were very ashamed in the 1990s with all the losses and putin still appears to be popular his invasion of ukraine in february seems to have helped too a recent poll put support for putin at 83 percent at the end of last year it was in the 60s but polls are tricky in russia and plenty of people questioned those numbers that's because after more than 20 years in power putin's established a system of almost total control and this is the last thing you need to know when putin came to power he did start to dismantle independent uh actors or institutions and it led finally to the very personalistic system where there is putin uh himself and his big apparatus serving his uh needs putin is unchallenged politically particularly you know in recent years where his main political opponents uh are either in exile in jail or death putin's also made sure he's unchallenged by the russian media in the early 2000s the kremlin took control of the big tv stations the main source of news for most russians and they could ensure not only that that the whole kremlin line uh was always uh spouted off to its audience but also a cult of personality around putin was built up and now we see a russia that is much more insular that is much more walled off from foreign sources of information or even views that are alternatives to the governments and we also see a president who seems much more walled off putin has always surrounded himself with a close circle of people he trusts the question is whether or not that's now got to a point where he's just being told what he wants to hear or whether he's even listening at all the system that was created is a personalized dictatorship system which went through rounds and rounds of selection that brought specific you know yes men who are around putin now whether that level of control makes putin stronger politically or ultimately more vulnerable is the big question but it certainly looks like he's planning to stick around in 2020 he changed the constitution to allow him to run for two more consecutive terms so he could technically be in power until 2036. 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Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 1,183,527

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Id: DFBjck8S__Y

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022