Age, Biography and Wiki
Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia. He studied law at Leningrad State University and later joined the KGB, where he served for 16 years before entering politics. Putin's rise to power began in the late 1990s, and he has been the dominant figure in Russian politics ever since. His life is documented in detail on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin.
| Occupation | Billionaire |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 7 October 1952 |
| Age | 72 Years |
| Birth Place | Leningrad, Soviet Union |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Putin is known for his athletic physique and stands about 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm) tall. While specific measurements such as weight are not publicly disclosed, his fitness and active lifestyle are often highlighted in media reports.
| Height | 5 feet 7 inches |
| Weight | |
| Body Measurements | |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Putin was married to Lyudmila Putina from 1983 until their divorce in 2013. He has two daughters, Maria and Yekaterina, from this marriage. Since his divorce, Putin has kept his personal life private, with few details available about any romantic relationships.
Putin's mother was a factory worker, and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. During the early stage of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin's maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Lyudmila Shkrebneva (m. 1983-2014) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Putin's net worth is estimated to be between $70 billion and $200 billion, according to various analysts. This wealth is speculated to come from hidden assets and close ties with Russian oligarchs and state-backed enterprises. His official salary as President of Russia is modest, reported to be around $110,000 annually, which starkly contrasts with his alleged wealth.
Career, Business and Investments
Putin's career spans from his early days in the KGB to his current role as President of Russia. His influence extends beyond politics into business, particularly in the energy and natural resources sectors. He has been instrumental in shaping Russia's economic policies and fostering relationships with key Russian business leaders. Notable assets linked to Putin include "Putin's Palace," a lavish estate near the Black Sea valued at around $1 billion, and a collection of luxury vehicles.
Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He resigned in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. In 1996, he moved to Moscow to join the administration of President Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and then as secretary of the Security Council of Russia before being appointed prime minister in August 1999. Following Yeltsin's resignation, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later in May 2000, was elected to his first term as president. He was reelected in 2004. Due to constitutional limitations of two consecutive presidential terms, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev. He returned to the presidency in 2012, following an election marked by allegations of fraud and protests, and was reelected in 2018.
Putin studied law at the Leningrad State University named after Andrei Zhdanov (now Saint Petersburg State University) in 1970 and graduated in 1975. His thesis was on "The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law". While there, he was required to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); he remained a member until it ceased to exist in 1991. Putin met Anatoly Sobchak, an assistant professor who taught business law, and who later became the co-author of the Russian constitution. Putin was influential in Sobchak's career in Saint Petersburg, and Sobchak was influential in Putin's career in Moscow.
From 1985 to 1990, he served in Dresden, East Germany, using a cover identity as a translator. While posted in Dresden, Putin worked as one of the KGB's liaison officers to the Stasi secret police and was reportedly promoted to lieutenant colonel. According to the official Kremlin presidential site, the East German communist regime commended Putin with a bronze medal for "faithful service to the National People's Army". Putin has publicly conveyed delight over his activities in Dresden, once recounting his confrontations with anti-communist protestors of 1989 who attempted the occupation of Stasi buildings in the city.
His political rise began in the Saint Petersburg administration (1990–1996), where in May 1990 he was appointed as an advisor on international affairs to Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Shortly thereafter, in June 1991, he became the head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office, overseeing the promotion of international ties, foreign investment, and the registration of business ventures. Though his tenure was marred by investigations from the city legislative council concerning discrepancies in asset valuation and the export of metals, Putin retained his position until 1996. During the mid-1990s, he expanded his responsibilities in Saint Petersburg, serving as first deputy head of the city administration and leading the local branch of the pro-government political party Our Home Is Russia, as well as participating in advisory roles with regional newspapers. Transitioning to the national scene in 1996, Putin was called to Moscow following the electoral defeat of Sobchak, where he assumed the role of Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department. In this capacity, he was responsible for managing the transfer of former Soviet assets to the Russian Federation. His career in Moscow advanced rapidly with his appointment in 1997 as deputy chief of the Presidential Staff and later as chief of the Main Control Directorate of the same department. A pivotal moment came in 1998 when President Boris Yeltsin appointed him director of the FSB, Russia's primary intelligence and security agency. In this role, Putin concentrated on reorganising and strengthening the agency after years of perceived decline, a period that would prove formative for his later approach to governance.
During his first term in office, Putin opposed some of the Yeltsin-era business oligarchs, as well as his political opponents, resulting in the exile or imprisonment of such people as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky; other oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich and Arkady Rotenberg are friends and allies with Putin. Putin succeeded in codifying land law and tax law and promulgated new codes on labour, administrative, criminal, commercial and civil procedural law. Under Medvedev's presidency, Putin's government implemented some key reforms in the area of state security, the Russian police reform and the Russian military reform.
Social Network
Putin is not known for active engagement on social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram. His public presence is largely managed through official government channels and press releases. However, his influence extends globally, with many world leaders and international organizations closely following his actions and policies.
In August 1999, Putin's profile increased substantially when he was named one of the three First Deputy Prime Ministers, and later the acting Prime Minister following the dismissal of Sergei Stepashin's cabinet. Endorsed by Yeltsin as his preferred successor, Putin quickly capitalised on his law-and-order reputation and rose in popularity, winning the presidential election in March 2000 and being inaugurated on 7 May 2000. Throughout his subsequent terms, alternately serving as President and Prime Minister, Putin has overseen extensive reforms aimed at consolidating state power, restructuring federal relations, and curbing the influence of oligarchs. His tenure has been punctuated by significant foreign policy actions, including the controversial annexation of Crimea in 2014, military interventions in Syria, and ongoing involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
In April 2025, US President Donald Trump criticized Putin's determination to continue the war against Ukraine despite the horrific death toll and called for a peace deal, posting on social media: "Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!" Putin rejected a proposal by the United States and Ukraine for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. In May 2025, Putin attended the Victory Day parade in Moscow with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and other foreign leaders.
The practice of the system is characterized by Swedish economist Anders Åslund as manual management, commenting: "After Putin resumed the presidency in 2012, his rule is best described as 'manual management' as the Russians like to put it. Putin does whatever he wants, with little consideration to the consequences with one important caveat. During the Russian financial crash of August 1998, Putin learned that financial crises are politically destabilizing and must be avoided at all costs. Therefore, he cares about financial stability"
Education
Putin holds a law degree from Leningrad State University, which he completed in 1975. He later received a Ph.D. in economics from the same institution in 1997. His academic background has been a subject of both praise and scrutiny over the years.
On 1 September 1960, Putin started at School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, near his home. He was one of a few in his class of about 45 pupils who were not yet members of the Young Pioneer (Komsomol) organization. At the age of 12, he began to practice sambo and judo. In his free time, he enjoyed reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin. Putin attended Saint Petersburg High School 281 with a German language immersion program. He is fluent in German and often gives speeches and interviews in that language.
In 1997, Putin received a degree in economics (Candidate of Economical Sciences) at the Saint Petersburg Mining University for a thesis on energy dependencies and their instrumentalisation in foreign policy. His supervisor was Vladimir Litvinenko, who in 2000 and again in 2004 managed his presidential election campaigns in St Petersburg. Igor Danchenko and Clifford Gaddy consider Putin to be a plagiarist according to Western standards. One book from which he copied entire paragraphs is the Russian-language edition of King and Cleland's Strategic Planning and Policy (1978). Balzer wrote on the Putin thesis and Russian energy policy and concludes along with Olcott that "The primacy of the Russian state in the country's energy sector is non-negotiable", and cites the insistence on majority Russian ownership of any joint-venture, particularly since BASF signed the Gazprom Nord Stream-Yuzhno-Russkoye deal in 2004 with a 49–51 structure, as opposed to the older 50–50 split of BP's TNK-BP project.
In 1975, Putin joined the KGB and trained at the 401st KGB School in Okhta, Leningrad. After training, he worked in the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence), before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where he monitored foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad. In September 1984, Putin was sent to Moscow for further training at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute.
"Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB", Russian-American Masha Gessen wrote in their 2012 biography of Putin. His work was also downplayed by former Stasi spy chief Markus Wolf and Putin's former KGB colleague Vladimir Usoltsev. Journalist Catherine Belton wrote in 2020 that this downplaying was actually cover for Putin's involvement in KGB coordination and support for the terrorist Red Army Faction, whose members frequently hid in East Germany with the support of the Stasi. Dresden was preferred as a "marginal" town with only a small presence of Western intelligence services. According to an anonymous source who claimed to be a former RAF member, at one of these meetings in Dresden the militants presented Putin with a list of weapons that were later delivered to the RAF in West Germany. Klaus Zuchold, who claimed to be recruited by Putin, said that Putin handled a neo-Nazi, Rainer Sonntag, and attempted to recruit an author of a study on poisons. Putin reportedly met Germans to be recruited for wireless communications affairs together with an interpreter. He was involved in wireless communications technologies in South-East Asia due to trips of German engineers, recruited by him, there and to the West. However, a 2023 investigation by Der Spiegel reported that the anonymous source had never been an RAF member and is "considered a notorious fabulist" with "several previous convictions, including for making false statements".
After the collapse of the Communist East German government, Putin was to resign from active KGB service because of suspicions aroused regarding his loyalty during demonstrations in Dresden and earlier, although the KGB and the Soviet Army still operated in eastern Germany. He returned to Leningrad in early 1990 as a member of the "active reserves", where he worked for about three months with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector Yuriy Molchanov, while working on his doctoral dissertation.
There, he looked for new KGB recruits, watched the student body, and renewed his friendship with his former professor, Anatoly Sobchak, soon to be the Mayor of Leningrad. Putin said that he resigned with the rank of lieutenant colonel on 20 August 1991, on the second day of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin stated: "As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on", although he said that the choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with "the organs".
Putin won the 2024 Russian presidential election with 88% of the vote. International observers did not consider the election to be free or fair, with Putin having increased political repressions after launching his full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. The elections were also held in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. There were reports of irregularities, including ballot stuffing and coercion, with statistical analysis suggesting unprecedented levels of fraud in the 2024 elections. In March 2024, the Crocus City Hall attack took place, causing the deaths of 145 people and injuring 551 more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on Russian soil since the Beslan school siege in 2004.
