Who is Putin?

LAHORE: Incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party had won 343 seats in the 450-member parliament (Duma) till the filing of this report on Monday evening when 93 per cent of the votes were counted.

Putin’s political entity had bagged 54.2 per cent of the votes cast amidst a record low turnout of 47.8 per cent, while his opponents “The Communist Party” and the nationalist “LDPR” had both secured just over 13 per cent votes.

The BBC has stated: “Putin has enjoyed 17 years in power as either president or prime minister. Voting irregularities were reported in several areas and the head of the election commission suggested that the results might be cancelled in three polling stations. Liberal opposition parties failed to get enough votes for party-list representation.”

The esteemed British media house has quoted the Central Russian Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova as saying: “To my utmost regret, not one other party managed to get over the 5 per cent barrier.”

The media house further reported: “The result increases United Russia's majority after it achieved 49 per cent of the votes in the 2011 Duma elections. The party, led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, will also take more seats in parliament, up from 238.  However, the turnout, based on partial figures, was the lowest in Russia's modern history and significantly down on the 60 per cent turnout in 2011.”

Not fewer than 109,820,679 voters were registered in Russian Federation on January 1, 2016. Taking into account people registered outside the Russian Federation, the total number of eligible voters for January 1, 2016 was 111,724,534. The BBC News said on September 18, 2016: “Mr Putin voted at around lunchtime in southern Moscow. Questioned by journalists, the president said, quoted by Russian media: "I know who I'm voting for. Don't you have an idea?"

Who is Putin?

Born on October 7, 1952, Putin was once a key operator of the Soviet KGB secret police.

Known for speaking fluent German, Putin was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before retiring in 1991 to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg.

From 1985 to 1990, Putin served in East Germany, using a cover identity as a translator. According to Putin's official biography, during the fall of the Berlin Wall that began on November 9, 1989, he burned KGB files to prevent demonstrators from obtaining them.

(References: The International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine, Sunday Express, the Telegraph and the Moscow Times etc)

He was largely an unknown figure when he was hand-picked by former president Boris Yeltsin as his successor in 1999 to take over after the dizzying years of transition from communism to capitalism.

On July 28, 1983, Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva and they lived together in Germany from 1985 to 1990.

They have two daughters, Mariya Putina, born April 28, 1985 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Yekaterina Putina born August 31, 1986 in Dresden, East Germany.

On June 6, 2013, Putin announced that their marriage was over, and on April 1, 2014, the Kremlin confirmed that the divorce had been finalised.

He was Russian Premier from 1999 to 2000, President from 2000 to 2008, and again Prime Minister from 2008 to 2012.

Vladimir Putin had earned 8.891 million rubles ($133,662) in 2015, which is 1.241 million more than in 2014, according to the tax return published on the Kremlin website on April 15, 2016.

The Russian president also declared ownership of a 77-square-foot apartment, a garage (18 square meters) and a tract of land (1,500 square meters). Also, Putin owns a 153-square-foot apartment. All property declared by Putin is in Russia.

Among Putin's official assets are two vintage Volga sedans as well as a Niva and a Skif tent trailer.

In 2013, the Russian president made 3.6 million rubles (about $100,000 at the time).

Figures released during the 2007 Russian polls had put Putin's wealth at approximately 3.7 million rubles (US$150,000) in bank accounts, a private 77.4-square-meter apartment in Saint Petersburg, and miscellaneous other assets.

Putin's reported 2006 income had totaled two million rubles (approximately $80,000).

In 2012, Putin had reported an income of 3.6 million rubles ($113,000).

In 2014, Putin ruptured Moscow’s ties with the West by annexing the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine following the ouster of a Kremlin-backed leader in Kiev.

He also launched Moscow’s first major military operation in decades outside the former Soviet region with a bombing campaign in Syria in support of leader Bashar al-Assad.

In 2015, he was designated Number 1 on the Time Magazine’s ‘Most Influential People’ list.

In 2013, 2014, and 2015, he was ranked first on the Forbes List of the Most Powerful People.

In April 2016, Putin had denied his involvement in Panama papers, but a few of his close trustees owned offshore companies worth two billion US dollars, according to the “Guardian” newspaper.

Interesting facts about Russia:

Stretching across 11 times zones, Russia covers more than 17 million square kilometres (6.6 million square miles), from its border with Ukraine and the Baltic Sea right across to the Pacific Ocean.

Russia is by far the biggest country on Earth, nearly twice as big by area as its nearest rival, Canada.

The border between Russia and China is one of the longest in the world.

Home to more than 146 million people, Russia also boasts vast energy reserves that have made it the world’s second biggest supplier of both oil and gas.

AFP writes: “In 1917 the seizure of power by Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik party following the collapse of the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty, plunged Russia into 70 years of Communist domination. Russia was the centre of the Soviet Union that grew to include 15 republics from the Baltics in the West to Central Asia. After the death of Lenin in 1924 Josef Stalin rose to dominate the Red Empire, instituting a bloody reign of terror that saw millions of citizens shot or sent to Gulag labour camps.”

AFP continues: “When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 Moscow was dragged into the Second World War. Over the next four years Russia bore the brunt of the bloodiest conflict in human history until the Allied victory in 1945. Following the end of the war Moscow and its former allies in the West plunged into the Cold War as the Iron Curtain divided Europe in two. In literature, giants including Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky have made the Russian novel famous with their respective classics “War and Peace” and “Crime and Punishment.”