Vladimir Putin 2022

 Russian leader Vladimir Putin was born in 1952 in Saint Petersburg (then known as Leningrad). After graduating from Leningrad State University, Putin began his KGB career  as an intelligence officer in 1975. Putin rose to the highest levels of the Russian government after joining the administration of President Boris Yeltsin in 1998, became Prime Minister in 1999 before taking power. is the president. Putin was again appointed Prime Minister of Russia in 2008 and maintained his  power by securing re-election as President in 2012.

 After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he left the KGB with the rank of deputy. colonel and returned to Leningrad as a supporter of Anatoly Sobchak (1937-2000), a liberal politician. When the latter was elected mayor of Leningrad (1991), Putin became  head of foreign relations and first deputy mayor (1994). 

 After Sobchak's defeat in 1996, Putin resigned  and moved to Moscow. In 1998, he was appointed deputy director of the presidential administration of Boris Yeltsin, responsible for the Kremlin's relations with governments in the region.

Soon after, he was appointed head of the Federal Security Service, a former branch of the  KGB, and head of Yeltsin's Security Council. In August 1999, Yeltsin fired Prime Minister Sergey Stapashin along with his cabinet and promoted Putin in his place.