Putin still reflects his tough start
Brought up in poverty, his mix of aggression and ambition served him well
MOSCOW — As a kid in a dismal Soviet communal apartment, Vladimir Putin was a scrapper who dreamed of being an operator — diligently training in martial arts and boldly walking into a KGB office to inquire about how to become a spy.
As Russia’s leader in the 21st century, he’s displayed both traits — fighting Chechen rebels, directing the annexation of Crimea and, allegedly, approving an extensive and devious campaign to undermine American democracy.
His announcement that he’ll run for a fourth term in office came rather late, a little more than three months before the March 18 election, but hardly as a surprise. The man and the office are indistinguishable.
As Russia’s leader since New Year’s Eve 1999 (he switched to prime minister from 2008-12 but was still seen as being in command) Putin clearly relishes the spotlight. Now 65, his displays of physical prowess such as bare-chested horseback riding have mostly faded away, but the hourslong annual news conferences and call-in shows testify to vigor and discipline.
Few, if any, politicians have stepped more quickly from the shadows into rapt attention at home and abroad. Before being named President Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister in August 1999, he had been head of the Federal Security Service, one of the KGB’s successor agencies, which is not a high-visibility position.
But the next month, he showed himself when commenting on the early days of the second war against Chechen rebels, saying “if we capture them in the toilet then we will waste them in the outhouse.” Adamant, macho, and a touch of crude language — the remark seemed to reveal the essence of Putin that was formed in his youth.
Putin was born Oct. 7, 1952, to factory-worker parents in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. According to interviews published after he became acting president, Putin and his parents lived in a dismal communal apartment with a wretched toilet down the hall.
Putin said he responded to these rough circumstances by becoming a childhood “hooligan.”
As a teen, Putin aspired to join the KGB — apparently more for adventure than out of ideology — and succeeded after graduating from Leningrad University’s law faculty in 1975.
Putin worked in counterintelligence, monitored foreigners in Leningrad and in 1985 started a stint in Dresden, East Germany. He started work for Leningrad’s reformist mayor in 1990. He resigned from the KGB a year later, on the second day of the abortive coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which was backed by the KGB.
Putin married Lyudmila Skrebneva in 1983. Thirty years later, the couple announced their marriage was ending; Putin was reportedly too devoted to his job to be an attentive husband.
Although reports have suggested that Putin has accumulated vast wealth, he shows little taste for real ostentation outside the gilded halls of the Kremlin. His public face is an older, better-fed version of the tough teen from a bad part of town, determined to dominate.