First Name: Vladimir
Title: President ( suggested as Prime Minister from March 2008)
Date of Birth: 07/10/1952
Place of Birth: St Petersburg
Family: His biography, translated into English under the title First Person and based on interviews conducted with
Putin in 2000, speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a rat-infested tenement in a communal apartment. In his youth, he was eager to emulate staunch intelligence officers, as enacted on Soviet screen by
Vyacheslav Tikhonov and
Georgiy Zhzhonov.
Spouses: Putin is married to Liudmila Putina, a former airline stewardess and teacher of German.
Children: 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.
Languages:
Putin speaks German with near-native fluency, and has passable English.
Interests:
Putin is a practicing member of the
Russian Orthodox Church. His conversion, which most observers agree was sincere, followed a life-threatening fire at his dacha in the early 1990s.
Hobbies: One of
Putin's favorite sports is the martial art of judo. It has been stated that
Putin began judo at the age of 14 and he continues to study judo even today.
Putin has won competitions in his hometown of
Leningrad (now
Saint Petersburg), including senior champion of
Leningrad. Now he is President of the Yawara Dojo, the same St. Petersburg dojo he studied at as a youth.
CV: Putin was appointed Chairman (predsedatel', or 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 Yuri 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 appointed Putin the second (acting) President of the Russian Federation. Presidential elections were held on March 26, 2000, which Putin won in the first round.