He's now 65, and he's not planning to leave anytime soon. The election will confirm Putin's argument that to improve life in Russia, the country needs continuity more than it needs drastic change, independent media, political opposition, environmental activism or rights for homosexuals and other minorities.
Russia will remain disproportionately dependent on oil prices and its 144 million people will stay poorer than they should be. They also will still be convinced that the world is out to get them. Putin's most important mission in the next six years will be working out a plan for what happens when his next term expires in 2024: Will he anoint a friendly successor or invent a scheme that allows him to keep holding the reins?
Today's all-powerful Putin bears little resemblance to the man who took his tentative first steps as president on the eve of the new millennium. Catapulted to power on Boris Yeltsin's surprise resignation as president, Putin walked into his new office Dec. 31, 1999, in a suit that seemed too big for his shoulders. His low-level KGB background made him seem shifty, and many Russians regarded him as little more than a puppet of the oligarchs then pulling the strings in the Kremlin.
Russia was still emerging from a tumultuous post-Soviet hangover. Contract killings dominated headlines, its army couldn't afford socks for its soldiers, and its budget was still dependent on foreign loans.
Eighteen years later, Putin's friends run the economy and Russia's military is resurgent. An entire generation has never known a Russia without Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in charge. And an increasing number of other leaders — President Donald Trump among them — are emulating his nationalist, fortress mentality.
The once-feisty Russian media has fallen silent. Kremlin propaganda now has a global audience, via far-reaching networks RT and Sputnik. Yet while Putin looks invulnerable on the surface, he has reason to worry. Sky More