The Most Powerful Man of the World 2025

 Vladimir Putin: 
The Most Powerful Man of the World 2025

We don't need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole.  —Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is one of the 21st century’s most influential leaders who has shaped his country’s political landscape for decades with a mix of strategic maneuvers, military aggression against Russia’s neighbors and controversial policies. He reintroduced highly centralized, top-down control within Russia. He  reduced media freedom and renationalized key industries. He made it clear to Russia’s oligarchs that their positions were conditional on their personal loyalty to him and their abstention from politics. Putin also tried to assert dominance in the near abroad—a Russian term for the former Soviet states on Russia’s borders. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and launched a proxy war in Ukraine in 2014, prior to a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Putin, the third and the eldest of 3 children, was born in Leningrad on October 7, 1952. Mr Putin is. His father was Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, Maria Ivanovna Putina was his mother and Spiridon Putin was his grandfather, His grandfather worked as a personal chef for both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. While Putin’s father was enlisted in the Soviet Navy, his mother worked at a factory. From 1960 to 1968, he attended Leningrad’s Number 193 Primary School. He went to High School Number 281 after the eighth grade. It was a magnet school focusing on chemistry run by a technical institution where he finished his studies in 1970. He received his diploma in 1975. His dissertation topic was “In International Law, the Most Favoured Nation Trading Principle.” He continued to be a Communist Party member of the Soviet Union until it was disbanded. He met Anatoly Sobchak, an adjunct business law lecturer. Later, he co-wrote The Russian Constitution and French prosecutions for corruption. He married Lyudmila Shkrebneva on July 28, 1983, with whom he shares two children, Katerina and Mariya.

Putin served 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB (Committee for State Security), including six years in Dresden, East Germany. In 1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of lieutenant colonel and returned to Russia to become prorector of Leningrad State University with responsibility for the institution’s external relations. Soon afterward Putin became an adviser to Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg. He quickly won Sobchak’s confidence and became known for his ability to get things done; by 1994 he had risen to the post of first deputy mayor. In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow, where he joined the presidential staff as deputy to Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin’s chief administrator. Putin grew close to fellow Leningrader Anatoly Chubais and moved up in administrative positions. 

In July 1998 President Boris Yeltsin made Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the KGB’s domestic successor), and shortly thereafter Putin became secretary of the influential Security Council.  In 1999 Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister. Although he was virtually unknown, but his public-approval ratings soared when he launched a well-organized military operation against secessionist rebels in Chechnya. Wearied by years of Yeltsin’s erratic behavior, the Russian public appreciated Putin’s coolness and decisiveness under pressure. Putin’s support for a new electoral bloc, Unity, ensured its success in the December parliamentary elections.

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly announced his resignation and named Putin acting president. Promising to rebuild a weakened Russia, Putin easily won the March 2000 elections with about 53 percent of the vote. As president, he sought to end corruption and create a strongly regulated market economy. Putin quickly reasserted control over Russia’s 89 regions and republics, dividing them into seven new federal districts, each headed by a representative appointed by the president. He also removed the right of regional governors to sit in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. He moved to reduce the power of Russia’s unpopular financiers and media tycoons by closing several media outlets and launching criminal proceedings against numerous leading figures. Overseeing an economy that enjoyed growth after a prolonged recession in the 1990s, Putin was easily reelected in March 2004. In parliamentary elections in December 2007, Putin’s party, United Russia, won an overwhelming majority of seats. Though the fairness of the elections was questioned by international observers and by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the results nonetheless affirmed Putin’s power. With a constitutional provision forcing Putin to step down in 2008, he chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.

Soon after Medvedev won the March 2008 presidential election by a landslide, Putin announced that he had accepted the position of chairman of the United Russia party. Confirming widespread expectations, Medvedev nominated Putin as the country’s prime minister within hours of taking office on May 7, 2008. Russia’s parliament confirmed the appointment the following day. Although Medvedev grew more assertive as his term progressed, Putin was still regarded as the main power within the Kremlin. While some speculated that Medvedev might run for a second term, he announced in September 2011 that he and Putin would—pending a United Russia victory at the polls—trade positions. Widespread irregularities in parliamentary elections in December 2011 triggered a wave of popular protest, and Putin faced a surprisingly strong opposition movement in the presidential race. On March 4, 2012, Putin was elected to a third term as Russia’s president. He resigned as United Russia chairman and  handing control of the party to Medvedev. He was inaugurated as president on May 7, 2012, and he nominated Medvedev to serve as prime minister.

Putin’s first year back in office as president was characterized by a largely successful effort to stifle the protest movement. Opposition leaders were jailed, and nongovernmental organizations that received funding from abroad were labeled as foreign agents. Tensions with the United States flared in June 2013, when U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden sought refuge in Russia after revealing the existence of a number of secret NSA programs. Snowden was allowed to remain in Russia on the condition that he stop bringing harm to our American partners. Putin commemorated the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the post-Soviet constitution in December 2013 by ordering the release of some 25,000 individuals from Russian prisons. In a separate move, he granted a pardon to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil conglomerate who had been imprisoned for more than a decade on charges that many outside Russia claimed were politically motivated. On September 28, 2015, Putin presented his vision of Russia as a world power, capable of projecting its influence abroad, while painting the United States and NATO as threats to global security. 

As the March 2018 presidential election approached, it seemed that Putin would win a fourth presidential term by a wide margin and he won the 2018 Russian presidential election with more than 76% of the vote. His fourth term began on 7 May 2018. On the same day, Putin invited Dmitry Medvedev to form a new government. In September 2019, Putin's administration interfered with the results of Russia's nationwide regional elections and manipulated it by eliminating all candidates in the opposition. In January 2020 Putin announced his intention to modify the Russian constitution in a way that would scrap term limits for presidents, paving the way for him to remain in office indefinitely. Medvedev promptly resigned as prime minister, stating that a new government would give Putin “the opportunity to make the decisions he needs to make.” The proposed constitutional changes were speedily approved by the Russian legislature, but Putin scheduled a national referendum on the matter, a move that critics described as little more than political theater. That vote was originally scheduled for April, but it was postponed until July due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unsurprisingly, the result was an overwhelming affirmation of Putin’s agenda, but opposition groups noted that there was no independent monitoring of the election process.

Russia’s heavily managed 2024 presidential election reached its predictable conclusion on March 17 with a landslide victory for Putin. No credible opposition figures were allowed to run; Boris Nadezhdin, a late emerging anti-war candidate, was hastily banned by the Russian electoral commission in February. Massive crowds descended on polling places at 12:00 pm on the final day of the election, seemingly in support of the “noon against Putin” demonstration that Navalny had proposed before his death. Throughout the occupied regions of Ukraine, heavily armed Russian troops accompanied poll workers to compel participation in the election.