A Quarter of a Century in Power: Russia under Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

On 31st December 1999, Russian society was upended when, despite commitments to serve his term, President Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned.

In accordance with the Russian constitution, the Prime Minister became acting President, until new elections were called. The man in question, defying expectations, had quickly ascended to become one of the most influential figures in Russian politics – a status he would continue to hold for the next 25 years.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin remains a global political enigma; he’s been in ever-tightening control of a nation in decline, the Soviet behemoth humiliated by the Parade of Sovereignties. His control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal has led to direct confrontation with the West, as he seeks to test the rules-based international order with a revanchist revival of the Russian Empire.

And yet, Western interpretations of the President often revolve around the term ‘madman’ – as if to suggest that Putin’s aggression towards ex-Soviet states is a mere byproduct, an unfortunate combination of misplaced rage and general insanity.

This, fundamentally, discredits the victims of Russian oppression under Putin. It devalues the arduous post-Soviet years for the former Eastern Bloc, excusing barbaric tyranny – inadvertently or not – by refusing to understand the true motivations behind Putin’s actions.

The truth, sinister as it may be, exposes a calculated effort to restore Russian pride following the collapse of the Soviet Union. To subjugate Belarus and Ukraine, undermine freedoms in the Caucasus, and exploit historical divisions in Central Asia – all whilst simultaneously intimidating the Western world – is the paramount rule in the Putin handbook for governance.

His 25 years have seen countless transitions of power in Western states, yet in Russia one man has ruled with an increasingly-suffocating grip. As we enter the 25th year of Putin’s Russia, it is crucial to assess his legacy thus far.

Beginning as a KGB agent stationed in East Germany, Putin’s ascent to power was unexpectedly fast. Following the Soviet collapse, Putin entered Russian politics and served in Saint Petersburg’s city administration as an advisor to Mayor Anatoly Sobchak.

Appointed Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 1998, Putin set to work reorganising the agency’s structure. He consolidated power within the agency’s upper echelons by suppressing information and allegedly ordering the murder of investigative journalist Anatoly Levin-Utkin. These years were formative in Putin’s approach to governance and saw his transformation into a major political figure within domestic Russian affairs.

On August 9th 1999, Putin was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, then Prime Minister, in a day that marked a rapid consolidation of power – defying domestic expectations that Putin would join an ever-growing line of short-term Russian Prime Ministers. Ahead of the scheduled 2000 Russian presidential elections, Yeltsin indicated his support for Putin as his successor.

A deeply fractured Russia, faced with the Dagestan Incursions, the Russian apartment bombings, and the Second Chechnyan War, quickly coalesced around Putin as the law-and-order candidate to restore internal security, cementing his position as Yeltsin’s undisputed successor.

Whilst he was initially seen as a staunch Yeltsin loyalist, Putin’s accession to the presidency at the turn of the millennium marked the culmination of a Machiavellian silovik’s road to the Kremlin.

Reminded of the Russian adage that ‘one can never leave the KGB’, Putin’s liberal tendencies under Sobchak can be seen as mere posturing – political expedience designed to help him climb the ladder of Russian politics. Truthfully, Putin’s worldview was born and shaped by a Cold War mindset which he routinely engages with to this day.

Putin’s first test came in August 2000, when news reached the Kremlin of a complication in the Barents Sea. During a Russian naval exercise, the submarine Kursk had become unresponsive to communications and it was later revealed that all 118 personnel had perished in an undersea implosion. Putin’s perceived indifference towards the victims’ families and his refusal to leave his Sochi holiday to visit the scene led to widespread criticism of the Kremlin.

When, in 2002, separatist Chechens took 912 civilian hostages in efforts to pressure Russian troop withdrawals from Chechnya, Putin refused to negotiate, instead authorising the use of narcotic gas to sedate the terrorists. Despite this leading to 132 hostage deaths, the Dubrovka Theater hostage crisis saw Putin’s popularity soar – further evidence of how he has benefitted from the ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effect throughout his presidency.

Putin’s first term saw blatant violations of independent press freedoms. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was killed in her home on Putin’s birthday; Politkovskaya had reported extensively on Russian conduct in Chechnya and wider corruption in society. His consolidation of power continued beyond media suppression, with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a billionaire oligarch and harsh Putin critic. Khodorkovsky, seen by some as a potential challenger for the Presidency, had his company – oil giant Yukos – dismantled and assets sold-off to Rosneft, owned by Putin loyalists.

Signs of fractures in Russia’s relationship with the West emerged when, in 2007, Putin announced Russia’s suspension of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, a Cold War-era treaty designed to place limits on military equipment and mandate the destruction of surplus equipment. He went further at the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, labelling NATO “a direct threat to the security of our nation”. These actions laid the groundwork for renewed tensions between Russia and the defensive military alliance.

Owing to Russian constitutional law, Putin couldn’t run for a third consecutive term in 2008, selecting loyalist Dmitry Medvedev as his successor. Following Medvedev’s success, he appointed Putin as his Prime Minister, beginning a period of ‘tandemocracy’ from 2008-2012 that saw Putin still hold significant power in the Kremlin.

In 2008, Russian forces invaded the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, installing puppet regimes loyal to Moscow. Putin was reported to have been instrumental in coordinating the invasion, having planned it before Medvedev’s term. The invasion marked the beginning of Putin’s direct intervention in sovereign states’ affairs.

Putin returned to the Presidency in 2012, issuing extensive decrees: a crackdown on same-sex relationships, restrictions on ‘foreign agents’ and promotion of Russian orthodoxy. Yet, perhaps the most defining moments of Putin’s third term stem from the Kremlin’s expansionist foreign policy.

On February 27th 2014, unmarked Russian forces launched a military campaign, seizing the Crimean peninsula and annexing it from Ukraine. This marked a severe escalation in Russian aggression, motivated by Euromaidan, which Putin saw as an existential threat to Russian unity.

Marking Russian interventionism in the Middle East, the Russian military entered the Syrian Civil War. A short campaign, marred by brutality, led to the defeat of rebel forces and the effective rendering of Assad’s Syria as a vassal-state, with Russia receiving key military bases in Khmeimim and Tartus as concessions.

The fiction that Kremlin interference was reserved solely for Russia’s smaller, ex-Soviet neighbours was dispelled when, in 2016, US media reported on alleged Russian interference in the US Presidential election, in order to damage Clinton’s campaign. This shocking violation of a global superpower’s democracy and internal affairs led to Putin becoming the reactionary figure on the global stage – a Chekist dictator, harkening back to his mercenary KGB days.

During the COVID-19 pandemic – which saw 400,000 deaths in Russia – Putin amended the Russian constitution to permit him to run for two additional six-year terms, despite earlier commitments to stand down in 2024. This was the culmination of a forceful Kremlin campaign to encourage democratic backsliding to Putin’s benefit.

Emboldened by NATO’s inaction over Crimea, Putin orchestrated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022 – nearing the 8th anniversary of Crimea’s annexation. Russia’s casus belli, a fabricated tale of Nazism on its doorstep, was widely condemned as a facade for Putin’s revanchist appetite.

Despite initial successes, Russia soon found itself on the defensive – Ukrainian President Zelensky’s tactical outmanoeuvring of Russia by deciding to stay in Kyiv is credited with galvanising Western support for Ukraine. Further counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, followed by a stagnant frontline, led to the Russian army’s humiliation on the global stage.

The first sign of cracks in Putin’s coercive apparatus emerged when mercenary group Wagner, headed by former Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched a march from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow designed to demonstrate anger over Russia’s failing invasion. In a manner characteristic of Putin’s opponents, Prigozhin died in a plane crash over Tver within months of the march. This led to the reabsorption of Wagner forces into the Russian armed forces and the end of any considerable threat to Putin’s rule.

Now, with NATO support faltering and a change in US administrations, Russia has regained the initiative on the battlefield, making gains in the Donbas region and countering the Kursk offensive. Putin, expected to meet President-elect Trump, will be keen to exit the damaging conflict, on terms favourable to Russia.

The Russian attack on Ukraine exposed, in no uncertain terms, the true intentions of Vladimir Putin. Any attempts at mutual cooperation with the West, any façade of democracy, any semblance of respect for international law, must be reevaluated in light of this blatant violation of peacetime European affairs.

In 25 years, Russia has transitioned from the dying embers of a Communist empire to an emboldened superpower willing to manipulate the international order to fulfil Putin’s Eurasianist dream. Whether Ukraine will be the death knell of Putin’s legacy remains to be seen.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru (Presidential Press and Information Office)

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