From his arrival in the Kremlin to the rebellion of the leader of the paramilitary group Wagner against the Russian general staff, a look back at the key moments of Vladimir Putin in power in Russia for more than two decades.
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Advent of Putin
In August 1999, Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president after the fall of the Soviet Union, propelled a virtual unknown, Vladimir Putin, to the post of 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 attacks attributed to Chechen separatists (nearly 300 dead).
Boris Yeltsin, undermined by alcohol and illness, resigns on December 31, 1999. His dolphin succeeds him definitively during the presidential election of March 2000.
War in Chechnya
From 2000 to 2009, the conflict against the Chechen and Islamist rebels, marked by abuses and the indiscriminate bombardment of Grozny, caused tens of thousands of victims.
At the same time, hostage-taking claimed by the rebellion resulted in bloody assaults by Russian forces, in particular 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, Vladimir Putin strengthened his grip on Parliament, placed regional governors under Moscow’s control, strengthened the FSB and brought the media to heel, as did the powerful and wealthy oligarchs. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ousted boss of the Yukos oil group resists and serves as an example, remaining ten years behind bars.
In 2006, the murder of journalist critical of power Anna Politkovskaya, and the polonium-210 poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, caused global shock waves.
The Medvedev interlude
The Constitution prohibiting him a third consecutive mandate, Vladimir Putin chooses as dolphin his subordinate Dmitri Medvedev, elected on March 2, 2008 without 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 republic candidate for NATO, after Tbilisi wanted to regain control of a pro-Russian separatist territory. Moscow crushes the Georgian army.
The return
At the end of 2011, a dispute broke out after legislative elections marred by fraud according to the opposition. Tens of thousands of people demonstrate every week in Moscow.
Re-elected president in March 2012, Putin brutally repressed the demonstrations.
“Great Russia”
Vladimir Putin put on the clothes of a restorer of “Great Russia” by annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, reacting to a revolution in kyiv fomented according to him by the West.
This operation is followed by a war in eastern Ukraine with pro-Russian separatists. Putin remains unmoved by Western sanctions.
Syria
In 2015, the Russian army came to the aid of Syrian Bashar al-Assad, whose forces were routed against rebels and jihadists.
The intervention saved the regime and Putin installed Russian power in the Middle East, at the cost of indiscriminate and murderous bombardments, particularly in Aleppo.
Eradicate the opposition
Since 2020, the Kremlin has been engaged in a policy of systematic repression. His main target: Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most famous detractor, who, after narrowly surviving a poisoning he blames on power, is serving a nine-year prison sentence and faces 30 years in prison in a new trial. in progress.
At the same time, the media, NGOs, websites and social networks are blocked.
Invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched his armed forces in Ukraine, claiming to save the Russian minority in this neighbor that he said he wanted to “denazify” and presented as a NATO pawn, the existential threat to Russia.
Facing an armed rebellion
In a televised address on June 24, 2023, he denounces the “mortal threat” and the risk of “civil war” after an armed rebellion led by the leader of the paramilitary group Wagner, Evguéni Prigojine, against the Russian command which he accuses of bombing his troops.
Earlier, the head of Wagner had claimed to hold the headquarters of the Russian army in Rostov, the nerve center of operations in Ukraine, and to control several military sites.