Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama didn’t see eye-to-eye during the 44th American President’s time in office.

As Russian forces brought about the annexation of Crimea, pounded Aleppo in support of Bashar al-Assad and were blamed for hacking Democratic National Committee emails during the US election, relations between the two leaders went from cool to frosty. During a four-minute conversation at an economic summit in Peru in November, Obama’s body language left onlookers in no doubt: Putin was unlikely to be one his post-presidency golf buddies.

Contrast that with the stance of Obama’s successor. Donald Trump has suggested that Putin might become his ‘new best friend’, heralded his strength as a leader and floated the abolition of US sanctions on Russia that were imposed in the wake of the Crimea annexation. Consider, too, the existence of a dossier compiled by a former MI6 agent, which is said to include unverified claims that Russian agencies could blackmail the President with “kompromat” collected during his stay at the Moscow Ritz Carlton in 2013.

Whether there is any truth in the dossier’s claims or not, the signs so far suggest that the relationship between the US and Russia is only going to heat up. But will that happen thanks to a warm friendship, or smouldering resentment? It remains to be seen.

Having ascended to the presidency under Boris Yeltsin’s aegis in 2000, Putin served two consecutive four-year terms – which was then the maximum. There followed a four-year hiatus in which Putin became Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev stepped in and the rules were changed to allow presidents to serve two consecutive six-year terms. Putin took the reins again in 2012 and, with no substantial opposition able to stand between him and another victory at the polls in 2018, it seems likely that he will be able to look back on almost a generation in charge of the largest country on Earth. However, to many onlookers, he remains a cipher.

Donald Trump has suggested that Putin might become his ‘new best friend’

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in 1952 and grew up poor, but during a golden age for the Soviet Union, a 20th-century empire that held nearly everything from Afghanistan to the Arctic Ocean. When Putin was nine, Yuri Gagarin won a major symbolic victory for the communists by becoming the first man in space. As a teenager Putin was inspired by tales of a different kind of Soviet derring-do: ‘One man’s effort could achieve what whole armies could not,’ he later explained. ‘One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people.’

After graduating with a law degree from Leningrad State University in 1975 he joined the KGB. In 1985 the job took him to Dresden in East Germany, which was to be his vantage point for the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union – a process that would see Russia cede possession of 21 countries in just two years.

Having been forced into an ignominious return to St Petersburg as an unemployed spy, it wasn’t long before the first seeds of Putin’s political ascent were sown. He was brought into local government by his former law school professor Anatoly Sobchak, who had been elected mayor. Putin became deputy mayor and chair of the committee on economic relations.

However, it was also around this time that he began to attract controversy. In 1992 an investigation was opened to look into a deal that Putin oversaw – one in which Russian companies were allocated raw materials that they were to sell or exchange in order to obtain supplies to counter food shortages in St Petersburg. After materials worth $100m were signed over to the companies, the food was never provided.,

The Kremlin has denied that Putin signed the documents that enabled the deal to go ahead.

In 1996, after Sobchak had suffered an election defeat and become the subject of a corruption investigation, Putin was summoned to Moscow. He was taken into the Kremlin by Anatoly Chubais, the powerful chief of staff widely regarded as a frontrunner to take over from Boris Yeltsin when the time came.

Despite being made head of the FSB (the post-Soviet incarnation of the KGB), Putin’s rise was not the story of a young hotshot making his way through the ranks. ‘When I talked to Kremlin insiders from that period, they were all astonished he had become President,’ says a former diplomat. ‘He was known to be quite efficient, but nobody paid much attention to him. He was rather short, and inconspicuous.’

And yet, when Boris Yeltsin decided to step down in 1999, it was Putin who was installed as acting President. ‘He was chosen by Yeltsin, Boris Berezovsky and Tatyana Yumasheva [Yeltsin’s daughter] as a safe guy who wouldn’t upset things,’ says the former diplomat, who would rather not be named.

But according to Sir Roderic Lyne, British ambassador to Russia during the first years of Putin’s presidency, the early signs indicated that the new man would prove to be more than just a safe pair of hands.

‘Putin gave a couple of TV broadcasts in a remarkably relaxed and self-assured way,’ says Lyne. ‘It was very unlike the old traditional style of broadcasting by Russian leaders – stiff and formal. He was relaxed, conversational and much more Western. One of Putin’s great strengths has been his ability to connect with the Russian people.’

When I talked to Kremlin insiders from that period, they were all astonished he had become President. Nobody paid much attention to him. 


Putin’s early public image had also been boosted by his response to news that Chechen terrorists had killed 293 people in bombs in tower blocks in three Russian cities in 1999. Putin appeared on television and told reporters: ‘We will chase terrorists everywhere. If in an airport, then in the airport. So if we find them in the toilet, excuse me, we’ll rub them out in the outhouse. And that’s it, case closed.’

According to Edward Lucas, senior editor at the 

The New Cold War: Putin and the Threat to the West

, Putin reached a high watermark during his first years in power. ‘When he first came in, he enjoyed a huge wave of popularity at home and abroad. When the oil price went shooting up in 2004 and 2005 he was being fêted by world leaders – including Blair and Bush. Bush famously said he looked into his eyes and got a sense of his soul. Russia wasn’t a pariah and it was growing fast. People were optimistic about its future.’

Since then, things have changed. The influence of Western powers on Ukraine’s Orange Revolution – when a re-run election gave rise to a pro-European president in 2005 – is thought to have caused ill-feeling. Russia’s own fortunes haven’t been helped by the decline in oil prices and the fact that only a tiny proportion of its citizens have prospered – many of them Putin’s associates. ‘There is collapsing social cohesion and rampant inequality,’ says Oliver Bullough, author of 

. ‘Those things have been exacerbated significantly by what Putin has done and the result of his rule is that the 0.01 per cent have got richer and the vast majority of Russians have been absolutely screwed.’

The statistics back Bullough up. According to a report from Credit Suisse, Russia has the highest income inequality in the world, with 110 billionaires controlling 35 per cent of the country’s wealth. Despite its natural resources, median wealth is valued at $871 per year – lower than India. Russia also scored below Nigeria for its ability to control corruption.

‘If he could wind the clock back he would,’ says Lucas, who adds that capital flight and the emigration of middle-class Russians is damaging the country. ‘He’s very dependent on the oil price, he hasn’t managed to diversify away from natural resources, he hasn’t managed to modernise the infrastructure. He’s now in a position where everybody knows that his, attempts to modernise the Russian economy have failed.’

And yet Putin remains popular. His approval rating reached a staggering 86 per cent last year and, apart from a brief spell at the start of his presidency, has never dipped below 60 per cent, according to the Levada-Center, an independent polling firm. Western politicians would surely sell their own grandmothers for similar ratings.

But then, how many of them have Putin’s talent for playing to the sensibilities of their own voters? Photographs of him engaging in a spot of bare-chested horseback riding, hurling opponents onto the judo mat, pumping iron in the gym and preparing for take-off in a fighter plane have all gone down well with blue-collar Russians, who make up the vast majority of the population.

He has also been helped by friendly TV coverage – all Russian stations are now state-funded – and it must be noted that his opponents seldom get the rub of the green. Most recently Alexei Navalny, who plans to oppose Putin in the 2018 election, has been involved in Kafkaesque legal wrangles that some claim are politically motivated, and which may result in him being unable to run. Boris Nemtsov, a critic of Putin who levelled allegations of corruption against him, was assassinated in Moscow in 2015. The authorities condemned the murder and launched an investigation.

Another notable Putin adversary to meet a grisly fate was Alexander Litvinenko. The former FSB agent accused his superiors within the agency of ordering the assassination of Putin ally-turned-enemy Boris Berezovsky, and also alleged that the 1999 apartment bombings blamed on Chechen terrorists were in fact orchestrated by the FSB in order to smooth Putin’s path to power. Litvinenko died from poisoning by radioactive polonium in 2006 while in London. A UK public inquiry into his death concluded that his murder was carried out by members of the FSB and was ‘probably approved’ by Putin himself.

But, according to some, Western media coverage of Putin is unfair. ‘Many global leaders face stereotypical parody, or are painted to fulfil a role within the media, and Putin is no different,’ says Anna Belkina of RT, the English-language arm of the state-funded broadcaster Russia Today. ‘The media needs a villain, and so they build up the Russian President – together with the rest of the country – to fit that bill to mythical proportions.’

When he first came in, he enjoyed a huge wave of popularity at home and abroad. Bush famously said he looked into his eyes and got a sense of his soul

And, according to Sir Tony Brenton, British Ambassador to Moscow from 2004 to 2008, Putin’s ‘demoniacal reputation’ is unjustified. ‘He’s very careful, very cautious, very self-contained, very thorough. I’ve never seen him in a ministerial meeting where he doesn’t know at least as much about what’s going on as anyone else around the table.

‘He has a slightly aggressive sense of humour; he’s not the sort of guy you’d expect to have a warm dinner party conversation with but, on the whole, what you see is what you get. He’s very driven by his wish for Russia to regain international respect.’

In meetings with ministers he often has a ‘snide wisecrack ready’, says Brenton, ‘so that you leave feeling slightly off balance or outmanoeuvred intellectually. For example, talking to a senior British minister just after a by-election in the UK that the minister’s party had lost, he commiserated with him on the defeat, but in a way that was slightly triumphalist.’

According to some estimates, Putin is also rich – worth as much as $40bn or even $70bn, which would make him among the wealthiest people on the planet. In her book 

, Karen Dawisha details claims made by former police investigator Andrei Zykov that relate to ‘Case 144 128’ and allegations that money was siphoned off from St Petersburg’s city budget and used to build holiday villas in Spain for Putin and his cronies. Another Putin critic, Stanislav Belkovsky, has claimed that the President has significant stakes in major companies such as Gazprom – although, if it exists, concrete evidence of such holdings has not been made public.

However, Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky takes a different line. ‘He has the whole country at his beck and call,’ Bershidsky wrote. ‘It is enough for Putin to snap his fingers, and state-owned companies will cede assets to his friends at bargain-basement prices.’ In other words, Putin wields such power that he does not require wealth in the conventional sense.

He also has an unorthodox stance towards international relations. Under a Western understanding of international borders, Russia’s activity in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is beyond the pale. But it is justifiable to a Russian President and public who harken back to a golden age and who have a special term, ‘the near abroad’, for states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. ‘It’s analogous to the way British people think about Ireland,’ says Bullough.

At the moment, by contrast to the rest of Europe, Putin’s position is enviably secure. With the European Union threatening to unravel and this year’s elections in Holland, France and Germany offering opportunities for right-wing populists to unseat moderate incumbents, the Russian President seems to be in the box seat.

His ends would be nicely served, Edward Lucas says, by the break-up of international organisations such as Nato and the EU. That would imbue him with more power on the world stage and pave the way for the long-term bilateral gas deals that he wants. ‘If there’s a chance to play divide and rule, he will.’

But looking further ahead to the end of his reign, Putin isn’t guaranteed to have things all his own way, warns Sir Tony Brenton. ‘His absolute nightmare is to end up like Saddam and Gaddafi, or to be in some Berlusconi-like trial.’ Is there a way to make sure that doesn’t happen? ‘To stay in power.’

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