From his arrival in the Kremlin to the rebellion of the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group against the Russian General Staff, a look back at the key moments of Vladimir Putin, who ruled Russia for more than two decades.
• Also read: Putin “is deeply wrong,” says Wagner boss, who is accused of “treason.”
• Also read: Putin opposes the “mortal threat” posed by the Wagner leader’s rebellion
• Also read: Russia’s weakness is “obvious,” says the Ukrainian president
• Also read: Putin calls his Belarusian and Kazakh allies
Appearance of Putin
In August 1999, Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president after the fall of the Soviet Union, promoted a virtually unknown Vladimir Putin to prime minister. This former head of the FSB (ex-KGB) quickly acquired the image of a strong man in a country traumatized by a wave of Chechen separatists (almost 300 dead).
Boris Yeltsin, weakened by alcohol and illness, resigns on December 31, 1999. His dolphin will finally succeed him in the presidential elections in March 2000.
War in Chechnya
From 2000 to 2009, the conflict against Chechen and Islamist rebels, which was marked by abuse and indiscriminate bombing of Grozny, claimed tens of thousands of lives.
At the same time, the hostage takings demanded by the rebellion ended with bloody attacks by Russian forces, notably in a theater in Moscow (850 hostages and 130 dead) and in Beslan in North Ossetia (more than 1,000 hostages and 330 dead). . including 186 children).
First turn of the screw
During his first two terms in office, Vladimir Putin increased his influence in parliament, placed the regional governors under Moscow’s control, strengthened the FSB, and brought the media and the powerful and wealthy oligarchs under control. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the ousted boss of the oil company Yukos, put up resistance and served as an example: he remained behind bars for ten years.
In 2006, the assassination of dissident journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the polonium-210 poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko sent shockwaves around the world.
The Medvedev Interlude
With the constitution barring him from a third consecutive mandate, Vladimir Putin elects his subordinate Dmitry Medvedev as the dolphin, elected on March 2, 2008 with no real competition. Without losing any of his influence, he became prime minister.
War in Georgia
In August 2008, the Russian army intervened in Georgia, a former Soviet Union candidate for NATO, after Tbilisi sought to regain control of a pro-Russian separatist area. Moscow crushes the Georgian army.
The return
A dispute erupted in late 2011 after the parliamentary elections were marred by fraud, according to the opposition. Tens of thousands of people demonstrate in Moscow every week.
Putin was re-elected president in March 2012 and brutally repressed the demonstrations.
“Great Russia”
Vladimir Putin donned the clothes of a restorer of “Greater Russia” by annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 in response to a Western-instigated revolution in Kiev.
This operation is followed by a war in eastern Ukraine with pro-Russian separatists. Putin remains unfazed by Western sanctions.
Syria
In 2015, the Russian army came to the aid of Syrian Bashar al-Assad, whose troops were routed against rebels and jihadists.
Intervention saved the regime and Putin installed Russian power in the Middle East, albeit at the cost of indiscriminate and murderous bombing, particularly in Aleppo.
Eliminate the opposition
Since 2020, the Kremlin has been pursuing a policy of systematic repression. His main target: Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most famous critic who, after narrowly surviving an intoxication he blames on power, is serving a nine-year sentence and faces a 30-year sentence in a new trial. runs.
At the same time, media, NGOs, websites and social networks are blocked.
invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin sent his forces into Ukraine, claiming to save the Russian minority in that neighbor he allegedly wanted to “denazify” and which posed the existential threat to Russia as a NATO pawn.
Faced with an armed rebellion
In a televised speech on June 24, 2023, he denounced the “mortal threat” and the risk of a “civil war” following an armed uprising led by the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, Evguéni Prigojine, against the Russian command, which he accused of bombing his troops .
Previously, the Wagner boss had claimed to keep the Russian army’s headquarters in Rostov, the nerve center of operations in Ukraine, and to control several military sites.