1952
Vladimir Putin is born
Born in postwar Leningrad, the future KGB officer rose to lead Russia for a quarter century, steering it toward authoritarian rule and war with Ukraine.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad, the city now called Saint Petersburg, on October 7, 1952. He was the youngest of three sons of a factory worker, Maria, and Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, a former navy conscript who had been badly wounded in World War II. His parents had already lost two children: one son died in infancy in the 1930s, and another died of diphtheria and starvation during the Siege of Leningrad. The family lived in a communal apartment on Baskov Lane, sharing basic facilities with several other households.
As a boy he took up sambo and judo at 12, and he attended a school with a German-language program, which left him fluent in German. He studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975, and joined the KGB the same year. From 1985 to 1990 he served in Dresden, East Germany, under cover as a translator. He resigned with the rank of lieutenant colonel in August 1991, during the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, and went to work for his former law professor Anatoly Sobchak, then the mayor of Saint Petersburg.
In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow and climbed quickly through the Kremlin administration. Boris Yeltsin made him director of the FSB, the main security service, in 1998 and prime minister in August 1999. When Yeltsin resigned, Putin became acting president, and he won his first presidential election in March 2000.
Why it matters
Putin has been the dominant figure in Russian politics since 1999, serving as president from 2000 to 2008 and again from 2012, with a term as prime minister in between. His early years in power coincided with rapid economic growth driven by high oil and gas prices, as well as a war that restored federal control over Chechnya.
His long rule also reshaped Russia’s political system into what many observers describe as an authoritarian state, marked by corruption, the suppression of opponents, and tight control of the media. Abroad, he oversaw the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which brought international condemnation and wide sanctions. In March 2023 the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest over the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children.
Did you know?
Putin’s grandfather, Spiridon Putin, worked as a personal cook for both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.
