Vladimir Putin: The road to power

Born in St.Petersburg in 1952, Putin signed up with the Soviet intelligence agency the KGB right out of law school in 1975. His first assignment was to monitor foreign nationals and consulate employees in his home city, then called Leningrad. He was then assigned to Dresden, East Germany. He reportedly burned hundreds of KGB files after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Putin was one of the deputies to St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak from 1991 to 1996. Sobchak met Putin at Leningrad State University and the two men were close until Sobchak's death in 2000. Despite accusations of corruption, Sobchak was never charged.

Putin quickly leapt from St.Petersburg to Moscow. In 1997, President Boris Yeltsin gave Putin a mid-level position on his staff — a position Putin would use to cultivate important political friendships that would serve him in the decades to come.

Putin was deeply affected by Anatoly Sobchak's death in 2000. After the apprentice outstripped his teacher politically, Sobchak became a vocal early proponent of Putin's bid for the presidency. A year earlier, Putin used his political connections to have fraud allegations against Sobchak dropped, the beginning of a pattern for friends of the former spy.

In June 2000, Boris Yeltsin stepped down, leaving his prime minister to become interim leader. As he was running for his successful presidential campaign, corruption allegations from his time on the city government in St.Petersburg resurfaced. Marina Salye, the lawmaker who brought up the claims, was silenced and forced to leave the city.

When Putin was constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term in 2008, his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ran in his stead. When Medvedev was elected, he appointed Putin as premier. This led to criticism of a "tandemocracy," in Moscow, with many people believing that Medvedev was Putin's puppet.

In March 2018, Vladimir Putin was elected to his fourth term as president. Because the presidential term has been extended, this means Putin will be in power for the next six years. However, the election was marred by a lack of opposition to the incumbent, as well as allegations of vote tampering and ballot-stuffing.

Less than two years after his latest election victory, Putin unexpectedly announced sweeping constitutional changes that prompted his most loyal ally, Dmitry Medvedev, to resign. He was replaced by little-known Mikhail Mishustin (R). Soon after that, Putin hinted he was willing to run again when his current term expires in 2024.