Comments by "Stella Maris" (@SuperGreatSphinx) on "CNN"
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин; born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician serving as the current President of the Russian Federation since 7 May 2012, previously holding the position from 2000 until 2008.
He was Prime Minister of the Russian Federation from 1999 until 2000, and again from 2008 until 2012.
During his second term as Prime Minister, he was the chairman of the ruling United Russia party.
Putin was born in Leningrad in the Soviet Union.
He studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975.
Putin was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before retiring in 1991 to enter politics in Saint Petersburg.
He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration, rising quickly through the ranks and becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999, when Yeltsin resigned.
Putin won the 2000 presidential election by a 53% to 30% margin, thus avoiding a runoff with his Communist Party of the Russian Federation opponent, Gennady Zyuganov.
He was reelected President in 2004 with 72% of the vote.
During his first presidency, the Russian economy grew for eight straight years, and GDP measured in purchasing power increased by 72%.
The growth was a result of the 2000s commodities boom, high oil prices, and prudent economic and fiscal policies.
Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008.
The 2008 presidential election was won by Dmitry Medvedev, who appointed Putin as Prime Minister, the beginning of what some opponents considered to be a period of "tandemocracy".
In September 2011, after presidential terms were extended from four to six years, Putin announced he would seek a third term as president.
He won the March 2012 presidential election with 64% of the vote, a result which aligned with pre-election polling.
Falling oil prices coupled with international sanctions imposed at the beginning of 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Eastern Ukraine led to GDP shrinking by 3.7% in 2015, though the Russian economy rebounded in 2016 with 0.3% GDP growth and is officially out of the recession.
Putin gained 76% of the March 2018 presidential vote, and was re-elected for a six-year term that will end in 2024.
Constitutional term limits prevent him from seeking the presidency again at that time.
Under Putin's leadership, Russia has scored poorly in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and experienced democratic backsliding according to both the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index (including a record low 20/100 rating in the 2017 Freedom in the World report, a rating not given since the time of the Soviet Union).
Western analysts no longer consider Russia to be a democracy.
Human rights organizations and activists have accused him of human rights violations and crackdowns on civil dissent or opposition as well as ordering assassinations of his critics and opponents; he has denied accusations of authoritarianism and human rights abuses.
Officials of the United States government have accused him of leading an interference program against Hillary Clinton in support of Donald Trump during the U.S. presidential election in 2016, which Putin has frequently denied and criticized.
Putin has enjoyed high domestic approval ratings during his career (mostly higher than 70%) and received extensive international attention as one of the world's most powerful leaders.
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