7 Key Moments That Defined Putin’s Life

However, a skinny but brave young man in a city plagued by street gangs needed an edge, and at the age of 12 he first started practicing the samboa Russian martial art, and then judo.

Putin was determined and disciplined, and by the age of 18 he was already a black belt in judo and ranked third in the national junior competition.

Of course, this has been used ever since as part of his caring macho personality. But he also confirmed his early belief that in a dangerous world you have to be confident and aware that, when a fight is unavoidable, “you have to strike first, and hit so hard that your opponent doesn’t get upAccording to the president himself.

People avoided going to 4 Liteyny Prospekt, the headquarters of the political police, the KGB, in Leningrad. So many passed through their interrogation cells to the gulag (forced labor camps) in the days of (dictator Joseph) Stalin that there was a joke about the headquarters of the fearsome body, the so-called Bolshoi Dom (Big House), which was said to be the tallest building in Leningrad, because you could see Siberia from his basement.

However, when he was 16, Putin walked into his red-carpeted reception and asked the officer behind the counter, rather puzzled, how could i enter.

At the KGB they told him that he had to have completed military service or have a bachelor’s degree to join. Putin even asked what degree it would be the better. Right, they answered, and from there, Putin insisted on getting a lawyer’s degree, after which was duly recruited.

For Putin, who was an intelligent man, la KGB was the biggest gang in townwhich offered security and progress even to someone with no connections to the Communist Party.

But it also represented the opportunity to be a change agent: as he himself said about the spy movies he watched as a teenager, “one spy could decide the fate of thousands of people.”

Despite all his hopes, Putin’s career at the KGB never got off the ground. He was a solid worker, but not a great leader. Nevertheless, he made an effort to learn German, which earned him an appointment to the KGB liaison offices in Dresden in 1985.

There he settled into a comfortable expatriate life, but in November 1989, the East German regime began to collapse, with surprising speed.

On December 5, a mob surrounded the KGB building in Dresden. Putin desperately called the nearest Red Army garrison for protection, and they helplessly replied, “We can’t do anything without orders from Moscow. And Moscow says nothing“.

Putin learned to fear the sudden collapse of central power, and he vowed never to repeat what he saw as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s mistake: failing to respond quickly and decisively when confronted with opposition.

Putin would leave the KGB when the Soviet Union imploded, but he soon secured a position as an intermediary of the new reformist mayor of what is now Saint Petersburg.

The economy was in freefall, and Putin was tasked with brokering a deal to try to help city dwellers get by, trading oil and metal for food worth 100 million dollars.

In practice, no one saw any foodBut according to a quickly suppressed investigation, Putin, his friends and the city’s gangsters pocketed the money.

In the “wild ’90s,” Putin quickly learned that political influence it was a monetizable good, and that gangsters could be useful allies. When everyone around him benefited from his position, why shouldn’t he?

When Putin became the Russian Presidency in 2000, he hoped to build a positive relationship with the West, on his own terms, including a sphere of influence throughout the former Soviet Union. But he was soon disappointed, and then angry, believing that The West was actively trying to isolate and degrade Russia.

When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sought to have his country join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Putin saw the light and the Georgian attempt to regain control of the breakaway region of South Ossetiasupported by Russia, became an excuse for a punitive operation.

Within five days, Russian forces smashed the Georgian army and forced Saakashvili to sign a humiliating peace.

The West was outraged. Less than a year later, however, then-US President Barack Obama offered to “fix” relations with Russia, even granting Moscow the right to host the 2018 World Cup.

For Putin it was clear that the use of force was the right way to go, and that a weak and fickle West would huff and puff, but in the end would back down before a determined will.

The widespread – and credible – belief that the 2011 parliamentary elections were rigged sparked protests that were galvanized when Putin announced he would stand for re-election in 2012.

Known as the “Protestas de Bolotnaya”because of the Moscow square they filled, represented the largest expression of public opposition to date under Putin.

Putin believed that the demonstrations were initiated, encouraged and directed by Washington, and he personally blamed then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

For Putin, these demonstrations were proof that the West had taken off its gloves and was coming for him, so, in effect, they were now at war.

As covid-19 spread across the world, Putin was plunged into unusual isolation even for personalistic autocrats, as anyone who came to meet him was isolated for a fortnight under guard and then had to walk through a corridor drenched in ultraviolet light that killed germs and was soaked in disinfectant.

At this time, the number of allies and advisers who could meet with Putin was drastically reduced to a handful of supporters and fellow warriors.

Exposed to fewer alternative views and hardly seeing his own country, Putin seems to have “learned” that all his assumptions were correct and all his prejudices justified, and thus the seeds of the Ukraine invasion were planted.

*The profesor Mark Galeotti is an academic and autor of several books, including“We Need To Talk About Putin” (We must talk about Putin) and the new“Putin’s Wars” (Putin’s wars).

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