When Russian President Vladimir Putin was growing up in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, he and his friends would hunt rats. One day, a huge, cramped rat suddenly attacked the young Putin and chased him into his room.
“I learned a quick and unforgettable lesson about the meaning of the word ‘crammed,’” Putin said in an interview. Putin
seems to identify with the cramped rat, which is forced to attack when it believes it is in danger.
“Resistance and Endurance”
Putin was born in 1952, seven years after the end of World War II, a time when the wounds of loss were still fresh. In 1975, he decided to serve his country from the shadows – he joined the KGB just two years after graduating from the Law School of Leningrad State University.
The image of a “cool, unusual” spy and the need to prove his worth probably drove him to join the KGB, said exiled opposition politician Gennady Gudkov, who served in the service in the 1980s.
“He is a fairly intelligent person. He passed all the exams to enter the spy academy. Everyone who entered this institution had to pass many, many serious tests of memory and psychological stability,” Gudkov said.
Putin’s psychological profile described him as emotionally detached, with a “reduced sense of danger” and a tendency to take risks.
The Collapse of Communism
A fluent German speaker, Putin was sent to Dresden, East Germany, in 1985.
East Germany, occupied by the Soviet Union after World War II, was, like much of Eastern Europe, a puppet state subordinate to Moscow. But in 1989, everything changed.
Putin watched communism collapse as revolutions spread and toppled governments across the Eastern Bloc. The experience created a deep suspicion of popular movements, revolutions, and revealed what could happen if Moscow showed weakness.
Having proven his worth and won Yeltsin’s favor, he was appointed prime minister in 1999.
His rise to power was enthusiastically supported by the oligarchs, who in the mid-1990s constituted the ruling class.
The first term
On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly announced his resignation from the presidency. Putin, as acting president, took over the reins of the country, assuring the nation that there would be no power vacuum.
Ιn his manifesto, he condemned Russia’s decline in the 1990s and stressed the importance of stability and a strong, centralized state.
The beginning of Putin’s presidency also coincided with a rise in oil prices, which drastically improved the quality of life in Russia after a decade of poverty.
But the oligarchs who believed they could manipulate Putin like a puppet made a terrible mistake.
Making Enemies
On July 29, 2000, bulletproof limousines transported 21 of Russia’s richest men to the Kremlin, where, seated around a huge table, Putin told them, in no uncertain terms, not to get involved in his plans.
Over the years, it was not just the oligarchs who had to fear Putin. His opponents and critics met suspicious or premature deaths.
Alexander Litvinenko, who accused the FSB of orchestrating the 1999 apartment bombings, was fatally poisoned in London in 2006.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed atrocities in Chechnya, was shot dead on the steps of her apartment in 2006. Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was shot dead outside the Kremlin walls in 2015.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the rebel leader of the Wagner group, was killed in an apparent grenade explosion on his plane in 2023.
Fears of Regime Change
Early in his presidency, Putin saw common ground between the US “war on terror” and his own campaign against Chechen separatists. He was the first head of state to call US President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks to offer support, he said.
Relations deteriorated as it became clear that Washington had its own ideas about world order.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Western interventions in countries such as Ukraine and Libya were red lines that the West had crossed.
Closer to home, mass protests erupted in Ukraine in 2004 against elections allegedly rigged in favor of the more pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovych.
This event, known as the Orange Revolution, was seen by Putin as Western – and specifically US – intervention aimed at undermining Russia’s influence in its neighbors and promoting regime change.
“Ukraine was a threat”
So when the Maidan Revolution broke out in Ukraine in 2013, toppling then-President Yanukovych, Putin interpreted it in the same way. The reaction was immediate.
Masked commandos seized the Crimean peninsula, which was soon annexed by Russia.
Putin also adopted an ideology of vaguely defined “traditional values,” initially in the background of his rhetoric. He presented Russia as “the protector of conservative traditions against a decadent, liberal Europe/West.”
“NATO’s eastward expansion, moving its military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders,” was a “fundamental threat” to his country’s security, Putin explained in a televised address.
Russia as a Great Power
In recent years, both U.S. intelligence agencies and Kremlin watchers have speculated that Putin’s decisions may be linked to his growing isolation.
Now that Donald Trump is in the White House, there seems to be a possibility of rapprochement between Russia and the United States, as Trump seems willing to compromise on the Ukraine issue by lifting sanctions or allowing Russia to keep the occupied territories.
They understand each other because Trump’s logic is business and Putin’s logic is extremely pragmatic, and business and pragmatism are not far apart. Τhe Russian president is not interested in negotiating with anyone other than the United States.
What he is interested in is the recognition of Russia as a great country.
