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...country residence. And a couple of hours later, Putin issued one of his first presidential decrees: "On Guarantees for the President of the Russian Federation...and Members of his Family." The decree provided bodyguards, pension--and total immunity from prosecution--for Yeltsin. Putin, a veteran of the KGB and its successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), will be Acting President until new elections are held, on March 26. By then, the people who organized Putin's lightning thrust into the Kremlin expect to ensure that he becomes Russia's next elected President...
...Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952. Little is known about his childhood and family life, though he is married and has two teenage daughters. Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975. On graduation he was quickly recruited into the KGB, which he served first in Moscow and then in East Germany. The acting President's spy life remains as much a mystery as the rest of his biography. Friends insist he was involved in "economic intelligence," designed to help the Soviet Union's badly antiquated industrial sector. After Yeltsin...
...Putin was sent back to Leningrad, still in the employ of the KGB, to monitor that city's blossoming perestroika movement. Among his contacts was one of the city's most progressive politicians, and a former law professor of his, Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak became mayor, Putin joined him and eventually handled foreign investment, among other responsibilities. Though he hunkered out of public sight--he was known as "a gray cardinal"--Putin began to accumulate power and a quiet reputation among reformers. In 1996, Sobchak lost a re-election campaign, and Putin headed to Moscow, where he quickly rose...
...weeks ago, his economic think tank was still saying that its program would not be ready until the middle of the year 2000. His track record as Prime Minister suggests a cynical pragmatist rather than a tough reformer. He is, for instance, a fan of former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, on whose grave he publicly laid flowers in June. Last fall, when riot troops stormed the Moscow headquarters of Transneft, the Russian oil-pipeline monopoly, and installed a new CEO of the Kremlin's liking, Putin did not intervene. A charitable observer, Mikhail Berger, editor...
Although very little is known as to what the former KGB chief stands for, one of his policy positions is fairly certain: guarantees of immunity from prosecution for Boris Yeltsin and his family. "Many of Yeltsin?s former aides believed he was psychologically incapable of letting go of the presidency," says Meier. "He and his family have long feared a Caucescu scenario, and there?s no doubt that he wouldn?t have quit unless he?d gotten all the immunity guarantees he needed." Yeltsin also asked Russia?s people for a New Year?s gift in return. "I want...