Word: vladimirovich
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been catapulted from the shadows into the most public of positions: President of all Russia. He is about to inherit constitutional powers akin to a Czar's in what is called an election but amounts to a coronation. But make no mistake: this was not a fair fight. Putin was handpicked for this handover by a tiny cabal in the Kremlin, little different from the ways of the old Soviet Central Committee. Boris Yeltsin and his cronies needed a successor loyal enough to give them the guarantee they craved of immunity from prosecution and strong enough...
Many politicians come to high office relatively unknown: look at the long history of surprising American Presidents in this century alone, from Truman to Clinton. And biography is not necessarily destiny. But bits and pieces of biography are almost all we have to assess Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin...
...Vladimir 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...