Lawyer…
ex-KGB…
judo master… animal lover?
Russian president Vladimir Putin is all of those things — but he's also extremely secretive.
So who is the real Vladimir Putin?
Keep watching to find out.
Born in St. Petersburg in the early 1950s, young Vladimir Putin and his family had a
living situation that was entirely common for Soviet citizens of the time — the Putins
shared a single apartment with two other families.
This meant communal use of the stove, the sink, the restroom, and so forth among all
three of the families.
Yet the Putin family was actually well set up in the context of the place and time, having
the largest room to themselves.
It was a 12-foot-by-15-foot room the young Vladimir shared with his mother and father.
The Putins were also notable in that they had a television set and telephone in their
apartment as well as a small dacha, or vacation home, outside of the city to which they could
retreat when time permitted.
For the times, it was an entirely comfortable upbringing, one that would even have been
the envy of many nearly destitute Soviet citizens of the day.
Despite the aura of invincibility the adult Putin likes to create around himself, his
life has hardly been one long success story.
As a young man, Putin was a poor student.
He was often tardy and occasionally truant, and did not devote much time or effort to
his studies.
Furthermore, Putin was often in trouble for things like talking in class, passing notes,
and even hurling chalkboard erasers at other students when possessed by fits of anger.
His grades were modest at best, and overall he showed little promise during his grade
school years.
Mediocre performance in grade school and middle school notwithstanding, Putin earned a spot
in the respected high school Leningrad School No. 281.
In his high school years, Putin turned things around.
The future Russian president began studying hard and earned much better marks as a result.
And at that point, Putin continued to focus on the one area in which he had always shined:
athletics, and in particular martial arts.
Putin had begun to practice sambo and judo at around age 11, and he showed an immediate
aptitude for martial arts, which remain an important part of his life even today.
Not that Russian president Vladimir Putin displays much concern for following laws these
days, but it's still worth noting that Putin earned a law degree back in the '70s.
To be specific, he graduated with his degree in law from Leningrad State University in
1975.
Though the future intelligence officer, president, and prime minister of Russia would never actually
practice law, 15 years after graduating, he did, for a brief stint, work at the same school
from which he had graduated following the end of a long KGB assignment.
Not that Putin was the least bit upset about never being a practicing lawyer.
Frankly, he never even wanted to use the degree as anything more than a stepping stone toward
his ultimate goal in life as a young man: he wanted to be a spy.
The young Vladimir Putin became enamored with the KGB after reading about the agency's clandestine
work and, at the tender age of 15, even showed up to a local KGB outpost to volunteer to
join the service.
When an officer there explained to young Putin that the KGB never took on volunteers, always
recruiting its members, Putin asked what he could do to increase his chances of being
hired.
The man replied that one should first attend law school in order to be considered for the
KGB.
Upon hearing this, Putin studied hard and went on to earn a law degree.
And soon after graduating, he was indeed invited to join the secret police.
Vladimir Putin served as a KGB officer for about 15 years, thus his time as a spy was
by far the most substantial portion of his career before he entered politics in the 1990s.
He joined the KGB shortly after graduating from Leningrad State University in 1975, and
he would remain a KGB operative until his 1990 retirement from the service.
By the time he had separated from the secretive organization, he had earned the rank of lieutenant
colonel.
In the early days of his career as a spy, Putin was stationed in his home city of Leningrad
and tasked with monitoring the activities of both foreign nationals in the city as well
as Russian officials working at consulates in Leningrad.
After nearly a decade spent in this relatively low-level type of assignment, Putin was briefly
transferred to Moscow for additional KGB training before being sent to the Eastern German city
of Dresden, then a part of the USSR.
It was in Dresden that Putin would serve in a still-classified capacity for the next handful
of years.
As East Germany slipped out of Soviet control in 1989, the year the infamous Berlin Wall
fell, Putin returned to Russia, settling in Moscow.
"The iron curtain between East Germany and West Berlin has come tumbling down."
The KGB would be dissolved after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, thus allowing
Putin to begin his new life in politics.
In August of 1999, President Boris Yeltsin, who clearly saw huge potential in Vladimir
Putin, appointed the 47-year-old as prime minister of Russia.
It's entirely possible Yeltsin did so primarily to clear the way for his quasi-protégé to
move up to an even higher office, because when Yeltsin stepped down from the presidency
four months later, in December 1999, he appointed Putin as the acting president of Russia.
Putin would be elected to the office in his own right in March 2000.
Putin was officially sworn in for his first presidential term in early May of 2000 and
held the office until May of 2008.
Then, Putin was appointed as the prime minister of Russia by his handpicked successor to the
presidency, Dmitry Medvedev.
After waiting while Medvedev served a single term as president, Putin ran and, of course,
won office again, resuming his role atop Russia's political hierarchy in 2012.
"We have won.
Long live Russia!"
With term limits for Russian presidents having been extended to six years, he held office
until 2018 and was then handily reelected.
During this fourth term as president, Putin saw to it that laws were changed that will
let him run twice more.
So, Putin may well serve until 2036 if he remains healthy and interested in staying
in power.
"Future starts here and now.
Future is you!"
Vladimir Putin has more money than he could easily spend in a lifetime, especially given
the fact that he’s nearing 70 years of age.
According to Forbes, Putin is almost assuredly a billionaire, and potentially many times
over.
However, no one can get a handle on exactly how much money the Russian president is worth
— nor can we be sure exactly how he amassed his shadowy wealth, either.
But there are a handful of prevailing theories that might explain how Putin has become so
prosperous.
The first major infusion of cash the ostensibly public servant may have gained could have
come from his misappropriating the wealth seized from oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
whom Putin and his government had jailed on trumped up charges in 2003.
Much of the cash that was taken from the billionaire was never accounted for, after all.
Another theory behind Putin's wealth is even more directly illicit: He might simply be
paid by people whom he allows to break the law, or at least skirt it.
Putin may well have made millions or even tens of millions through bribes, kickbacks,
and thank-you payments for helping his cronies to better themselves as long as they better
his bank account.
"Sure that time has come to change this."
There is one other theory, and it's that Putin is rich in bravado and swagger, but not in
cash.
He might not have billions or even many millions himself despite his projection of wealth,
but it really would not matter as he has the state coffers of Russia at his disposal to
fund almost any whim.
Vladimir Putin was married for a very long time, but has now been divorced for many years.
Putin married his now ex-wife on July 8, 1983, after the couple had courted for a couple
of years.
Born in early 1958, Lyudmila Shkrebneva was a little more than half a decade Putin's junior
and was in her early 20s when they met.
She was a stewardess, which was a coveted and competitive job in the USSR in that era.
Putin would later say of his marriage to Lyudmila:
"I understood that if I didn't marry for another two or three years, I would never marry.
Though, of course, I had made a habit of leading a bachelor's life.
Lyudmila uprooted it."
So perhaps unsurprisingly, Putin was not exactly a hopeless romantic.
It's surprising that the Putins managed to stay married for so many years, all things
considered.
The couple remained married for 30 years, only divorcing in the year 2013.
By the end of the union, there was apparently no love left and plenty of acrimony, with
Lyudmila calling her husband a, quote, "vampire," with Putin saying at one point that those
who could stand to be around his soon-to-be ex-wife for more than three weeks deserved
to have a monument erected in their honor.
Vladimir Putin definitely has at least two children, and there is a chance he has more.
The Russian president is a master at keeping his personal life secret, despite how often
the eyes of the world are on him, so it's quite hard to know for sure.
But the two known children were born long before he had ascended to top national office,
and we do know a few things about them.
Both children are daughters, and both were born with Putin's ex wife Lyudimila.
One of his now-adult children is believed to be 36 years old, the other 35, meaning
that they would have been born when Putin was still posted in Dresden in East Germany.
Vladimir Putin's older daughter, Maria Vorontsova, is a genetics researcher and endocrinologist
who lived for some years in the Netherlands until officials in that country called for
her to be expelled following the suspected Russian-backed downing of a passenger plane
in the year 2014.
His younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, is a scientist who studies physics and mathematics
and is a member of the Russian council for the development of physical culture and mass
sports.
She is also a former competitive acrobatic dancer.
While Vladimir Putin's marriage may have flamed out with no love left at the end of 30 long
years, he still has lots of love to give, it seems.
And some of that love overlapped, too.
Putin has purportedly been involved with former gymnast Alina Kabaeva since the early 2000s,
though as per standard operating procedure with the Russian president's personal life,
the details here are all quite murky.
We know for sure that Putin and Kabaeva have been an item in the past and likely still
are.
And we know Kabaeva is a good three decades younger than Putin.
The former gymnast may be the mother to more Putin children, and she may also be but one
of several girlfriends the autocratic ruler has now or has had over the years of the past
decade or two.
Some sources have hinted that Kabaeva gave birth to twins by Putin, in fact.
What is known for sure about Alina Kabaeva herself is that she was an inarguably talented
and accomplished gymnast in her heyday, having earned two Olympic medals: a gold and a bronze.
After leaving sports, Kabaeva tried out modeling, singing, and a few other false start careers.
She then entered politics and held a seat in the Duma section of Russia's parliament
for nearly a decade.
Putin is definitely known for bragging about many things, but when it comes to martial
arts, he puts his money where his mouth is: Putin is a black belt in judo.
Or at least, he was until the International Federation of Judo stripped him of his title
in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Lack of title aside, the Russian president has long been recognized as a competent practitioner
of judo and sambo, and he has trained in the martial arts since he was a boy.
The practice has always been close to Putin's heart, so much so that well into his national
political career, he even found time to serve as the head of the same studio where he had
trained as a child.
It's worth noting that when a noted U.S. Marine judo expert analyzed Putin's performance in
judo exhibitions, he confirmed the leader as genuinely capable even well into his 60s.
Vladimir Putin is fluent in three languages.
Of course the native Russian speaks his mother tongue, and he is also quite fluent in German,
a language he was compelled to use often during his years in the KGB when he was posted in
East Germany.
Putin is also known to be able to speak English, but what's not clear is the Russian president's
level of fluency in this language.
He is reportedly a good enough English speaker to be able to understand the language well
enough to not need translators, but he hardly ever reveals this in public.
According to Express, it is almost assuredly a careful political calculation that has led
to Putin's reticence to speak English in public.
After all, geopolitically, most of the nations in which English is the primary language are
at odds with Russia, and were even outright enemies of the Soviet Union he served during
the earlier years of his career.
In other words, it's a "power play," as Express puts it.
He has admitted to knowing the language, though, and does use it privately, such as when he
spoke directly to director Oliver Stone on several occasions while the American filmmaker
interviewed him in 2017.
"Do you like it?"
"Very much."
"Good."
Putin does, for the record, often speak in German in public.
Before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has a long history of ordering assassinations
— or at least doing so tacitly, though no one paying much attention has any doubts who
is directing things.
Of the many deaths that have resulted from Putin's directives are those of journalist
Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot to death in the fall of 2006 following her revealing
reporting of the ongoing Russian aggression in Chechnya.
Putin also surely OK'd the poisoning death of former-intelligence-officer-turned-defector
Alexander Litvinenko in London in that same year.
There are a host of other successful assassinations that can be tied to Putin, along with several
failed attempts, such as the failed poisoning of former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal,
and of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
For those who have lived through an attempted Russian assassination, it's likely just a
matter of time before another attempt is made — which makes Navalny's continued vocal
opposition to Putin all the more impressive.
In what has only become a more and more laughably bitter irony with the unprovoked and illegal
invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was once nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yes, the same prize that has been issued to the likes of the Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr., Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama, just to name a few.
How did Putin find himself even adjacent to the many recipients of this august prize?
It was made by the Russian International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples
of the World, an "advocacy group" that reportedly pursues peace around the world.
Putin was nominated by the organization thanks to his help in finding a "nonmilitary" way
to punish the Syrian government for using illegal chemical weapons in the course of
the protracted Syrian Civil War.
This is, of course, the same Vladimir Putin who worked closely with the government of
Syrian president Bashar al Assad on matters such as securing a 50-year lease for Russian
extraction of phosphate in regions of Syria.
You can say a lot of negative things about Vladimir Putin and have them be true, and
you can say a lot of positive things about him and have them be false, but one truth
about this complex man is that he loves animals.
Now, that's not to say he does not kill animals at times, whether he is hunting big game with
a high-powered rifle or fishing while conspicuously shirtless, but nonetheless, he has a soft
spot for furry friends.
For instance, there was the time that Putin leapt to his feet and snatched a dog held
hanging from its scruff by Turkmenistan's president.
Putin then cradled and calmed the puppy, protecting it with a notable tenderness.
Additionally, there have been many times that Putin has been photographed cuddling with
big cats, such as leopards and tigers met at animal sanctuaries.
It's quite likely that President Vladimir Putin is a very rich man, and it's quite unlikely
anyone will ever know the true extent of his wealth.
But if you want to get an idea of his likely riches, look not to a dollar amount alone,
but also to other less liquid assets.
Like those on wheels, for example.
According to the India Times, Putin may own as many as 700 cars.
While the most visible car associated with Putin is his official state car, an Aurus
Senat Limousine, it is hardly his only vehicle.
Putin owns a broad array of cars of all types, and he apparently also may have as many as
58 aircraft.
Putin also, of course, has a mega yacht that is worth around $100 million.
For a bit of perspective here, according to TASS, the median monthly salary in Russia
was 32,422 rubles, or about $450, per month, in 2020.
That amounts to a median annual income of about $5,400 in U.S. dollars.
Which is not enough to buy a plane, or yacht, or even a limousine.
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