On Thursday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced what the West had been predicting for weeks. He launched an invasion on Ukraine, sending his forces by land, air and sea to the neighbouring country.
Here is a profile of the Russian leader:
- Born in 1952 in Saint Petersburg, Putin joined Russian secret agency KGB in 1975 and served as an officer till 1990. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he was employed by the Kremlin.
- Putin served as Prime Minister of Russia for one year (in 1999) during Boris Yeltsin's presidency and ascended to the highest office in 2000. He has remained in power since then.
- Since Europe largely depends on gas supply from Russia, this gives Putin a huge international influence. State-owned Gazprom is one of European Union's (EU's) largest suppliers.
- Since Russian constitution limits the number of terms a president can serve to two, Putin swapped places with Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev.
- He was re-elected President in 2012, and just two years into office, annexed Crimea. Nearly eight years after that, Putin ordered the attack on Ukraine. Missiles rained down on Ukraine as columns of troops poured across its borders.
- Putin has been voted the world's most powerful person four times between 2013 and 2016.
- In 2017, he was accused of interfering in the US presidential election, which was won by Donald Trump. Both Putin and Trump have denied the allegations.
- In March 2018, Putin was re-elected for fourth term as Russian President.
- In January 2020, Putin proposed constitutional changes on Wednesday that would give him scope to extend his grip on power after leaving the presidency. The dramatic moves were widely seen as preparing the ground for 2024, when Putin is obliged to leave the presidency.
- Senior intelligence officers in the United States have claimed in recent weeks that Putin wants to create a “Russian empire” and wants to pull Ukraine back into Russia's orbit. He had called Ukraine the “crown jewel” of Russia and in a 2021 essay, said the people of both the countries are one.
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