Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Владимир Владимирович Путин, born October 7^th, 1952) is the current President of Russia in his second stint as president since 2012, having previously served from 1999 until 2008, between his two stints as president he served as Prime Minister of Russia. He was previously an agent of the KGB during the Cold War and his domestic and foreign policy are based on his former job.

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Vladimir Putin Full Name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin Alias: Dobby the Elf Pale Moth Pootie Poot Pootin Vladolf Putler Puppet Master Uncle Vova Vladimir The Destructive Crabe Evil Dwarf Pariah Putin The New Tsar Vladimir Poopin The Hitler of Russia The Modern Day Stalin Origin: Leningrad, Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia) Occupation: President of Russia (1999 - 2008; 2012 - present) Prime Minister of Russia (1999 - 2000; 2008 - 2012) Skills: Political power High intelligence Military training Expert in judo Master manipulation Control over the media Multilingualism Charisma Hobby: Ruling Russia Playing ice hockey Recognizing the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine Making nuclear threats to scare off opponents Silencing his opponents Goals: Become President of Russia (succeeded) Annex Crimea from Ukraine (succeeded, but currently ongoing) Capture Kyiv (ongoing) Capture Kharkiv (ongoing) Capture the Donbas Region (ongoing) Spread his influence across the world (ongoing) Invade Ukraine (succeeded, but currently ongoing) Restore the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union (ongoing) Defeat Ukraine (ongoing) Kill Volodymyr Zelenskyy (ongoing) End Russia's war with Ukraine as soon as possible (ongoing) Conquer Kherson (succeeded, then failed, but currently ongoing) Annex Kherson and the Donbas from Ukraine (succeeded, but currently ongoing) Crimes: Propaganda Censorship Unlawful imprisonment Abuse of power Oppression Theft of Crimea Invasion of foreign country Interfering in other countries’ political affairs Ukrainian independance denial Mass murder Child murder War crimes Genocide Crimes against humanity Pedophilia (implied) Homophobia Transphobia Authoritarianism Torture Violation of human rights Americophobia Racism Misogyny Anglophobia Xenophobia Ainuphobia Imperialism Type of Villain: Totalitarian Megalomaniac

“	You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place.	„
	~ Vladimir Putin

Putin is widely considered to be a Russian dictator; many watchdog organizations and human rights groups have cited human rights abuses and accusations of political corruption in his regime, and often his political opponents tend to mysteriously "disappear". He also has many alleged criminal connections.

His style of governance has been compared to that of Emperor of the Russian Empire Nicholas I and Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Biography

Putin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975. Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He later moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of President Boris Yeltsin.

He briefly served as Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999. After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became acting president, and less than four months later was elected outright to his first term as president and was reelected in 2004. As he was then constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president, Putin chose to become the prime minister again from 2008 to 2012, and was reelected as president in 2012, and again in 2018.

Putin signing documents recognizing the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as free states

During his first tenure as president, the Russian economy grew for eight straight years, with GDP measured by purchasing power increasing by 72%, real incomes increased by a factor of 2.5, real wages more than tripled; unemployment and poverty more than halved and the Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction rose significantly. The growth was a result of a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas which constitute the majority of Russian exports, recovery from the post-Communist depression and financial crises, a rise in foreign investment, and prudent economic and fiscal policies.

Serving under Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012, he oversaw large scale military reform and police reform. In 2012, Putin sought a third term as president and won with almost 64% of the vote. Falling oil prices coupled with international sanctions imposed at the beginning of 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the War in Donbass led to GDP shrinking by 3.7% in 2015, though the Russian economy rebounded in 2016 with 0.3% GDP growth, and the recession officially ended.

Development under Putin has included the construction of pipelines, the restoration of the satellite navigation system GLONASS, and the building of infrastructure for international events such as the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Putin received 76% of the vote in the 2018 election and was re-elected for a six-year term ending in 2024.

Under Putin's leadership, Russia has experienced democratic backsliding. Experts do not generally consider Russia to be a democracy, citing jailing of political opponents, purges and curtailed press freedom, and the lack of free and fair elections. 

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Putin delivering his address announcing the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has scored poorly on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index. Human rights organizations and activists accuse Putin of persecuting political critics and activists as well as ordering them tortured or assassinated. In February 2022, Putin warned that Ukraine's accession to NATO could embolden Ukraine to reclaim control over Russian-annexed Crimea or areas ruled by pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, saying: "Imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and a military operation [to regain Crimea] begins. What – are we going to fight with NATO? Has anyone thought about this?" On 7 February, Putin said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron that "[a] number of [Macron's] ideas, proposals ... are possible as a basis for further steps. We will do everything to find compromises that suit everyone." Putin promised not to carry out new military initiatives near Ukraine.

On 15 February, the Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, backed a resolution calling for diplomatic recognition of two self-proclaimed separatist republics in Donbas. On 21 February, Putin signed a decree recognizing the separatist republics as independent states. On 24 February, Putin in a televised address announced a "special military operation" in Ukraine, launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He said the purpose of the "operation" was to "protect the people" in the predominantly Russian-speaking region of Donbas who, according to Putin, "for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime". Putin said that "all responsibility for possible bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine".

Putin's invasion was met with international condemnation. International sanctions were widely imposed against Russia, including against Putin personally. Following an emergency meeting of United Nations Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: "President Putin, in the name of humanity, bring your troops back to Russia. Putin's ally China abstained.

2022 Invasion of Ukraine

In response to what Putin called "aggressive statements" by the West, he put the Strategic Rocket Forces's nuclear deterrence units on high alert. U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Putin was "frustrated" by slow progress due to the unexpectedly strong Ukrainian defense, "directing unusual bursts of anger" at his inner circle. The White House and other observers questioned Putin's mental health after two years of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. On 28 February, as a condition for ending the invasion, Putin demanded Ukraine's neutrality, "denazification" and "demilitarisation", and recognition of Crimea, which had been annexed by Russia, as Russian territory. A Russian businessman is offering $1 million to any military officer who apprehends Putin "dead or alive" for committing war crimes in his invasion of Ukraine.

On 3 March, after a phone call between Putin and French President Macron, Macron's senior aide said that Putin "wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine. He will, in his own words, carry out his operation to 'de-Nazify' Ukraine to the end." Some analysts say Putin miscalculated when he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and is leading his country into an unwinnable war and economic collapse. On 4 March, Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian military and its operations, leading to some media outlets to stop reporting on Ukraine.

Villainy

• Putin is accused of rigging the 2016 US election in favor of Donald Trump by spreading disinformation about Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton, and having the GRU hack into the Democratic Party's information systems to steal computer files.
  • A US intelligence report found that Putin unsuccessfully tried to interfere in the 2020 US election by spreading damaging information about Trump's rival Joe Biden.
• His administration has been accused of committing domestic terrorist attacks in Russia.
  • Most notably, when Putin was Prime Minister his government is suspected of ordering the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which killed 307 people, and blaming Chechen terrorists as a pretext for the invasion of Chechnya which resulted in the Second Chechen War. Alexander Litvinenko, the defector who first accused Putin of this, was later assassinated in the UK by Russian security forces.
• Following the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, allegedly by Chechen terrorists, Putin ordered the Russian Armed Forces to bombard the Chechen city of Grozny with ballistic missiles. The attack resulted in numerous civilian deaths and has been characterized as a war crime. Many other war crimes were committed during the course of the war.
• He has enacted purges of several of his political enemies, with prominent Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny being imprisoned for alleged corruption. Navalny's imprisonment has been internationally condemned as a sham, and the Russian government is accused of trying to have Navalny poisoned in prison.
• He has banned protests and has people imprisoned for posting memes that mock the government or church. He is also openly anti-LGBT, having banned gay pride parades and public discussion of homosexuality among other things.
• He is allies with Alexander Lukashenko, Viktor Yanukovych, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bashar al-Assad, Alpha Condé, Kim Jong-un, Narendra Modi, Nicolás Maduro, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ali Khamenei, Mohammed bin Salman, Rodrigo Duterte, Min Aung Hlaing, Hun Sen, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Isaias Afewerki, Daniel Ortega, Marine Le Pen, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Than Shwe, Omar al-Bashir, Emomali Rahmon, Askar Akayev, Sadyr Japarov, Ilham Aliyev, Serzh Sargsyan, Jair Bolsonaro, and Xi Jinping. He also was friendly with Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Slobodan Milosevic, Hugo Chávez, Saparmurat Niyazov, Islam Karimov, Heydar Aliyev, Aung San Suu Kyi, Leonid Kuchma, Silvio Berlusconi, Nicolas Sarkozy, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Aleksandar Vučić and Donald Trump.
• He has suppressed all mass media that is not controlled by the state.
• In 2014 Putin ordered the successful invasion and annexation of Crimea, which was declared a violation of international law by the United Nations. This was followed in February 2022 when Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. The ongoing invasion has included illegal referendums internationally condemned as rigged to add parts of Ukraine to Russian territory and has been characterized by widespread war crimes by Russian troops.
• Despite the Russian Constitution forbidding the use of torture, Russian authorities have been accused of torturing detainees by human rights groups during Putin's time in office. Russian troops in Ukraine have also been implicated in torturing prisoners of war.
• During Putin's years in office, a series of Russian democrats, journalists, and opposition leaders have been killed in mysterious circumstances.
• According to this article by Finnish magazine and tabloid Iltalehti, a report by political ministries revealed that Putin and his government are trying to control Finnish politics and possibly detach Finland politically from other Nordic countries, the Baltic states and the political camp managed by the USA and Great Britain.
• Has been accused of connections to the Russian Mafia, particularly mob boss Semion Mogilevich.
• In February 2017, Putin signed into law legislation decriminalizing several forms of domestic violence. The amount of domestic violence-related homicides in Russia increased significantly as a result.
• During the 2002 Moscow hostage crisis, Putin's police employed poison gas which killed about 100 hostages and shot and killed all 40 militants while they were unconscious. Putin subsequently attempted to cover up the truth about the incident, lying to the public about the gas used and the hostage's cause of death, and refused to investigate the crimes committed by the police during the raid.

  

  Ukrainian rescuers check the remains of the 18th school of Chernigiv after shelling during Russian invasion of Ukraine

• Multiple international investigations, including a Dutch criminal trial, have held Putin's government responsible for the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people. In 2023 an investigation team concluded that Putin had likely personally signed off on the decision to supply the missile that destroyed MH17.
• International observers have accused Putin of rigging Russian elections.
• Intelligence agencies in the United States concluded that Russian agents, presumably led by Putin, have meddled in various elections (most notably the 2016 presidential election which was won by Donald Trump), although Putin has denied this and the claims are disputed.
• He has also been accused of being a pedophile by Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, with Litvinenko claiming the existence of videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate depicting Putin having sex with underage boys, although these claims have never been substantiated.
  • What fueled the credibility of this accusation was the fact that Putin, for unknown reasons, lifted the t-shirt of a random four- or five-year-old boy and kissed his stomach during a walkabout in a public square near the Kremlin.
• Despite Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov being a Kremlin servant (like his father), Putin's administration has a history of Islamophobic discrimination, having banned a lot of Islamic material as "extremist" and ordered Muslim clerics arrested and allegedly tortured. The US State Department considers Russia to be a country without religious freedom.
• In 2004, he refused to recognize the cultural genocide of the Ainu people committed by Japan after receiving a letter from an Ainu community residing in Kamchatka Krai.

Human right violations

Kharkiv downtown street destroyed by Russian bombardment

His record on human rights violations has been marked by the flattening of Chechnya, the demolition of Georgia, the crackdown of all media, especially independently-owned media that has been critical of the Kremlin such as NTV, the instigation of an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine that culminated in the accidental downing of a civilian aircraft, the bombing of aid convoys, the slew of Kremlin opponents dropping dead from polonium poisoning, Russian soldiers taking long "vacations", and the suppression and abuse of protestors. Interestingly, when proceedings were about to be brought against him to the International Criminal Court for possible crimes against humanity, he immediately withdrew Russia as a member state.

Putin is also heavily involved in the ongoing Syrian Civil War, having supported the incumbent Bashar al-Assad government of Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011: politically, with military aid, and since 30 September 2015 also through direct military involvement. The latter marked the first time since the end of the Cold War that Russia entered an armed conflict outside the borders of the former Soviet Union.

Many well known politicians and people from other categories have compared Vladimir Putin to Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler, as well as Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin. It is often related to the activity against Ukraine and the violation of international law. Among them are King Charles III of Britain, Hillary Clinton, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Mikheil Saakashvili, Vladislav Inozemtsev, Zbigniew Brzezinski, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Stephen Harper, Garry Kasparov, Charles Lane, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Dalia Grybauskaite, Bronisław Komorowski, Arkady Babchenko, Savik Shuster, Stephen Fry, Ian Austin, Andrey Piontkovsky, Boris Nemtsov, Nikolay Fyodorov, Carl Bildt, Petro Poroshenko, and Herta Müller. The Crimean speech of the Russian President played a role for some comparisons on the Ukrainian issue.

During its campaign in Ukraine, it has been reported that Russia has violated international law not to use excessively dangerous weapons, such as the Cluster, the Novichok.

Bucha's massacre

The mayor of Bucha, Anatoliy Fedoruk, said that at least 280 individuals from the city had to be buried in mass graves. Local residents had to bury another 57 bodies in another mass grave. Serhiy Kaplishny, a local coroner who fled but returned, said that as of 3 April, his team had collected more than 100 bodies during and after the fighting (including deaths of soldiers and deaths from natural causes).

He said that before leaving, he had hired a backhoe operator to dig a mass grave near the church, as the morgue was unable to refrigerate bodies due to the lack of electricity, and "It was a horror". He also said that since returning, he had picked up 13 bodies of civilians who had had their arms tied and been shot at close range.

The exact number of people killed is unknown. Fedoruk said at least 300 people had been found dead in the immediate aftermath of the massacre. In an interview with Reuters, deputy mayor Taras Shapravskyi said only 50 of the victims had been confirmed as having been extrajudicially executed. The figure of 300 was later revised to 403 on 12 April.

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said, "In Bucha alone the death toll is already higher than in Vukovar", referring to the killing of hundreds of Croat civilians and prisoners of war during the Croatian War of Independence. On 13 April 2022, BBC News posted an article saying "at least 500 dead have been found since the Russians left" Bucha.

Vitaly Vinogradov, the Academic Dean of the Kyiv Slavic Evangelical Seminary, was among the dead in Bucha. The body of Zoreslav Zamoysky, a local freelance journalist, was also found in Bucha.

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Ukrainian 15 years old girl received treatment in Germany