Many sure would not even have been born when Vladimir Putin, when the current president of Russia, was invested as head of state for the first time. Because they have passed, nothing more and nothing less, than 25 years. Because it was in the already Far 2000 when, on May 7, The now Russian leader assumed his position once Boris Yeltsin resigned from it.
It was in an election held in March that year. It was in a elections that Putin went as an interim president and who won with 52.94% of the votes scrutinized. Thus came to power. Thus came a president who goes for his fifth mandate and that, except In 2008 when he placed Dmitri Medvedev, his dolphin, In Kremlin it has been he who has sent in Russia.
A command that already stroked when, in the summer of 1999, Boris Yeltsin appointed him Russian prime minister. It was his fourth option, after of ceasing just 18 months to three other heads of government. The couple ended when, at the end of the year, Yeltsin left their position.
And there was Putin. A Putin who returned to St. Petersburg with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the goodbye of communism in East Germany. Already in Russia, he continued working for secret services, And it was in 1991 when, according to the official version, he resigned from his rank of Lieutenant Colonel after the coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1991.
The first thing is the first: the nuclear briefcase
Nine years later, Putin came to power in Russia. The first thing he had in his hands was The nuclear briefcase that Yeltsin gave him. And the first thing he had to face was a great economic crisis … and the second war of Chechnya. This is how the former director of the heirs of the KGB became known to the world.
A more than convulsive situation. One, disappointed with Yeltsin. With economic changes that went from Soviet socialism to the most typical of the West. That’s when The Russian Army swept with Cecheniawith Putin, making that big problem to be one of the regions in which he enjoys greater popularity. The economy solved it because oil reached high prices in the international community.
Has modified the Constitution to continue in power
He has taken the pleasure of power. Putin, seeing that the Constitution only allowed two mandates, has modified it to go for the fifth and who knows whether to reach the sixth according to the current rules marked by himself. Because it has been 25 years, but may well be more than 35 and he ends his direction in Russia being an octogenarian.
And there is little opposition. His authority has only been questioned For the armed rebellion of Prigozhin, An ancient ally of his. Both he and the rest of Wagner’s dome They died in a plane crash Two months after rebelling.
His opposition, in exile, in jail or dead
Because Putin has narrowed the fence to anyone who dared to criticize him. The critical press with him has disappeared. Anna Politkóvskaya, a journalist, was shot dead in the portal of his house in 2006. His rivals, in exile or in jail. Or dead, like Alexei Navalni, who died in a prison in the Arctic where he served for fraud and extremism.
Its popularity is high. It is because the war has triggered the opinion that its citizens have about the figure of their leader. That in your country, because in the rest of the world it is not exactly the same. His relationship with the West is practically nil And, despite his friendship with Donald Trump, the tension with the United States for his attacks on civilians in Ukraine is increasingly palpable.
Because in Crimea, in 2014, everything began. Because he continued in 2022, with the invasion of the country led by Volodimir Zelenski. From that moment on, the threats of both himself and his government to every participation of Europe in the conflict has been a constant.
Russia, almost isolated from the world
As constant, the bombing of the population of Ukraine has been. Especially this year, in a 2025 in which attacks on innocents have multiplied and in which the objectives of their bombs have not been military infrastructure but civilians. However, Russia has joined its leader.
A leader, a Putin, who lives the 25th anniversary of his first inauguration. That, except when in 2008 he placed his dolphin, he has ruled for five years in Russia. Now, with his country almost isolated from the world by war, by the invasion, of Ukraine to know how many more years he can turn at the Kremlin. The Constitution has already modified when necessary …
