Home » Topics » World Leaders » Vladimir Putin » Vladimir Putin: Prime Minister of Russia (2008-Present)
Vladimir Putin has been a prominent, controversial and enigmatic fixture of the Russian political scene for the better part of two decades. Putin was appointed the acting President of the Russian Federation when Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned from office in 1999. Currently serving as the Prime Minister of Russia, Putin served two consecutive terms as president, between 2000 and 2008, before being appointed to Prime Minister in 2008 by then-President-elect Dmitry Medvedev.
During his two terms as President, Putin was largely credited for leading the Russian Federation out of the economic despair that followed the fall of the Soviet Republic. However, the Prime Minister has also been widely criticized of late for economic policies which many of his critics believe lead to the Russian financial crisis that occurred in 2008.
Since his appointment to Prime Minister, Putin has become a figure of significant interest, domestically and abroad, due to the popularly of a series of video clips which have been broadcast globally, both in the media and on the World Wide Web.
Each of the video clips released seem to follow a similar theme, depicting Putin as a virile, masculine, even heroic outdoorsman.
Vladimir Putin joined the Communist Party while in college and remained an active member until the party's dissolution in 1991. While completing his studies at Leningrad State University in Moscow, he was recruited into the KGB, joining the country's elite security services organization upon graduating in 1975. Putin resigned his position with the KGB in 1992.
However, Putin remained active in politics and governmental administration, holding a variety of official posts. After accepting the position of deputy manager under President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, Putin accepted an appointment as deputy chief of staff in charge of the Main Control Department. From there, he went on to serve as the first deputy chief of staff in charge of Russian regions in 1998, before briefly taking over as the Director of the KGB's successor, the Federal Security Services, a post he held until 1999.
Not long after being appointed to his first term as Prime Minister in August of 1999, Putin was nominated to the position of Acting President of the Russian Federation, following the unexpected resignation of President Boris Yeltsin.
In the year 2000, Putin ran as the incumbent, and was elected to his first full term as President. Putin was re-elected to the Presidency in 2004, but did not run in the election of 2008 due to a constitutionally mandated two-term limit. During Putin's presidency, the nation realized dramatic economic gains in GDP (Gross Domestic Product), individual income, as well as a previously unprecedented nationwide decrease in poverty. Putin's fiscal policies along with the increase in the price of oil, the country's vast reserves of natural resources, and an improved global credit rating have been credited for the economic rebound experienced by the Russian Federation during this time period.
Former President Putin was appointed to the office of Prime Minister by the current President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, in the year 2008. Together, Putin and Medvedev would oversee another crippling, financial crisis which occurred later in the year, a crisis some of his critics attributed directly to Putin's fiscal policies.
Putin has also been highly criticized by his internal political rivals as well as external, international interests, human rights organizations, and some former Soviet States for his aggressive foreign and domestic policy.
Despite the criticisms of his opponents, however, Putin has also been praised by some, including representatives of the World Bank, for his decisive action in an effort to mitigate the damage caused by the recent economic crisis. A leading Russian economist stated that the government's "swift, comprehensive, and coordinated policy response has helped limit the impact."
Despite some optimism surrounding the Russian Federation's possible inclusion into the World Trade Organization, Vladimir Putin withdrew from the talks in 2009 in favor of a trade deal with Kazakhstan and Belarus, two former Soviet Republics.
Prime Minister Putin made his way into the mainstream popular culture following the release of a series of somewhat sensational video clips. The clips depict the elder statesman engaged in a variety of athletic activities. The first video, released in 2008, showed the Prime Minister demonstrating his martial arts techniques to a group of students. The second clip circulated shows a shirtless Putin riding horseback through the Russian wilderness and also trying his hand at fly-fishing, shirtless again, and submerged, waist-deep in a fast-running mountain stream.
In yet another clip, released as recently as 2010, Putin is shown hunting a Siberian Tiger with a tranquilizer gun. During one of the scenes included in the clip, a TV crew member describes how Putin had saved the entire group from an attack by the tiger in question. Soon after, more video emerged of Prime Minister Putin hunting Whales with a harpoon gun in what appears to be the middle of the frozen Bering Sea.
The videos, which have been widely circulated on video sharing websites such as YouTube, have drawn considerable interest from viewers located all over the world.
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