Vladimir Putin 60 is force for Russia

George W. Bush tried once as president of the world power America, to discover the soul of Vladimir Putin. He looked Putin, the president of a country that had abdicated as the second world power, deep into my eyes and wanted to have identified a man who was trustworthy. Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell saw during a visit to Russia in a difficult mission in early 2001 into Putin's eyes, however, "only KGB" - Putin is so unpredictable and dangerous. Gerhard Schroeder as chancellor again courted the Russians at a time when a "flawless democrat" when Putin 2004 already it was to put the opposite of democracy to the factory. Apparently, the West has not become smart from Putin, who had supported the world power America on the one hand in Afghanistan, then a few years ago in Munich but verbally the Cold War opened and threatened with missiles against Western missile defense installations in Europe. Putin once described himself as a politician who slaving like a galley slave for Russian well, but still possesses enough power. Watch from the political fringe ago he would not, for his construction work should not be jeopardized. His personal performance Putin sees that Russia strengthened economically and politically stable, has risen from the kneeling position and have mitmische world again - on a par with America.

"Putin for ever"?

No one but Putin himself knows whether he will stand by his current third term as president-elect once again for the highest office in the state. But who is convinced of his indispensability as Putin, is unlikely to remain otherwise. On the other hand, just the prospect of a "Putin for ever", a Putin for all time, according to an overshadowed by allegations of election fraud during the winter and spring of last brought hundreds of thousands to protest against the "Putin system" on the road. This danger Putin tried by tightening the thumbscrews domestic defend.

In his native Leningrad Vladimir Putin as a working-class child growing up in a community home for several families. Its habitat is the court in which the law of the jungle applies. Therefore, the boy begins to boxing and judo interested to maintain its rank in the pack. From KGB Putin is fascinating as a teenager. The "KGBeschniki" would have fought selflessly for high ideals; said he wanted to emulate, it is decades later, he asked to be entered. Even before graduation, Putin turns therefore to the Leningrad KGB branch to the opportunity for a career as a "spy" to explore the "Enlightenment".

Witness the demise of the GDR

It is advised him to study law, which he adheres. 1975 takes it to the KGB. In the domestic department, it is said that he has also been used to combat dissidents.But he is also trained for missions abroad and rewarded in 1985 with a post in Dresden. In the GDR, Putin seen from his point of view 1989 a disaster. For in a country that seems to an entire Soviet Army and the East German Communists firmly under control, the peaceful uprising is proclaimed against the system - and Moscow is silent on the calls for help. At that time he gained the impression that the Soviet Union was suffering from fatal paralysis. The end of the Soviet Union, he deplored as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century.

A year later, Putin is back in his hometown, which soon will be called again St Petersburg. There the work of Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor is making waves as a reformer and of itself, the beginning of a career politician Putin, who brings it to the deputy mayor. As wily campaigner, Putin proves neither for President Yeltsin remembered as a powerful Kremlin party party "Our Home Russia" still at Sobchak attempt at re-election. Putin enters in 1996.

Yeltsin's preferred successor

Important contacts in the capital, he has but with Peter burgers Anatoly Chubais, the ideologists of the privatization, the curse many Russians today, as it has brought them nothing, and Alexei Kudrin, Deputy Minister of Finance. Putin receives an important position in Yeltsin's presidential administration is, within two years of the deputy head and then head of the KGB's successor, the FSB.

When Putin was appointed in 1999 as the Executive Prime Minister, he also publicly declared Yeltsin to his preferred successor, and the chosen one proclaims to apply for the following year for the presidency. New Year's Eve resigns Yeltsin, Putin makes the acting president, and this opens up so that the best chance of winning the presidential election.

Oligarchs took him for steerable

For the stunning career of Moscow Bankrupts in Saint Petersburg, Putin has qualified that he did not reveal his own ambitions for power, making believe the oligarchs, he steered. They regarded him as a viable presidential candidate why.Further helped Putin that he had always been loyal to Yeltsin, who began to put more and more into his perplexity on the secret as the backbone of the state.Which Putin was to follow him.

Here are twelve years of increasingly authoritarian rule. Putin even manages the trick to make you forget the population that he was part of the system Yeltsin yes, which includes privatization a la Chubais and the oligarchs had heard. The latter because he fought publicly.

Work on a "Eurasian Union"

The consolidation of its power to help Putin high world prices for Russian energy.They allow social benefits which in turn disguise economic policy blunders and lack of democracy. For some time, Putin vehemently served the phantom pain of the Russians as a result of the downfall of the Soviet Union. Because he tried to "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century "to be corrected by the creation of a Eurasian Union.

It could be that the forces of Russia Putin while overstretched, which is inside quite brittle. This Sunday is the Vladimir Putin, who is probably going to repeat Soviet mistakes, 60 years old.