Putin to stay put in Moscow
Outlasting 3 US presidents, he’s one of globe’s strongmen.
Vladimir Putin, who is set to extend his long rule to 2024 in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday, has stamped his total authority in Russia, silencing opposition and reasserting Moscow’s lost might abroad.
The 65-year-old former KGB officer has reimposed the Kremlin’s grip over society since taking power 18 years ago after a lawless but relatively free decade following the demise of the USSR.
On the international stage, he has outlasted three US presidents to become one of the globe’s undisputed strongmen, thrusting Moscow into a new rivalry with the West by snatching Crimea from Ukraine and launching a pivotal intervention in Syria.
Named the world’s most powerful person by Forbes for the past four years running, the judo black belt has built a macho man image, helped by publicity stunts that included riding topless on horseback through the Siberian wilderness and darting an endangered tiger.
Bolstered by a slavish state media, he is projected to take around 70% of the vote by official pollsters, despite producing no programme and refusing to take part in televised debates.
Supporters laud him as a saviour who restored pride and traditional values to a humiliated nation.
To foes, however, Putin has dragged his homeland further from democracy, has presided over a seizure of the state by a new elite of former secret police cronies and has stoked nationalism in a bid to restore Moscow’s lost empire.
Putin was born into a working-class family in Leningrad – now Saint Petersburg – on October 7, 1952 and cut his teeth in the city’s rough-and-tumble neighbourhoods. “The Leningrad streets taught me one thing – if a fight is unavoidable, you have to hit first,” Putin said in 2015.
He fulfilled a childhood dream by joining the KGB intelligence service, getting posted in 19851990 to Dresden in what was then East Germany. – AFP