Cómo Vladimir Putin se convirtió en el hombre fuerte de Rusia y en el gran enemigo de Occidente

Vladimir Putin has become one of the greatest enemies of the West. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 he unleashed a war in the heart of Europe... And has raised the ghosts of a nuclear war. With this war, Putin has faced international condemnation and also criticism within Russia. There are even those who consider it the Russian president's biggest mistake. But how did this former agent of the KGB, the feared Soviet secret service, manage to consolidate and maintain his power in the largest country in the world? On the one hand, Putin led the Russian economy from post-Soviet debacle to decades of prosperity.

On the other hand, he became strong through questionable political practices: he is accused of persecuting his opponents and crushing any dissent. And from the beginning, with the aim of returning Russia to his power. Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, Soviet Union. Today, Saint Petersburg, Russia. In a communist country very different from the one he governs today. He studied law and served as an intelligence agent for the KGB, the Soviet secret service, for 15 years, 6 of them in Dresden, East Germany. In 1999 he headed the Russian spy service FSB, a replacement for the KGB, and was unknown to most Russians when then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed him as his prime minister.

And the Yeltsin government was in trouble. First there was the failure of Russia's first war with Chechnya, one of the former Soviet republics. The conflict that left 50 thousand dead (1994-1996) ended with the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya when Moscow seemed to resign itself to a de facto independence of that territory. Let us also keep in mind that Yeltsin was the first president after Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader Russian that dissolved the Soviet Union giving rise to 15 independent republics of which Russia was by far the largest. So he was in charge of transforming Russia into a capitalist country after 7 decades of communism.

Yeltsin promoted a market economy and prices previously controlled by the State were released. And while he managed to fill the empty shelves of communism, the prices were prohibitive for most Russians, making him very unpopular. He also carried out a privatization campaign that gave rise to the Russian oligarchy when the state-owned companies that had been the energy treasure of the former Soviet Union were auctioned off to the highest bidder. Under his rule, Russia approached the West and financial organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank. But the promised prosperity did not come, many Russians continued to live in poor conditions and this forced Yeltsin's resignation on December 31, 1999.

Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, replaced Yeltsin. Putin had gained the trust of   Yeltsin with a new offensive in Chechnya, which was returned to Russian control in May 2000,   already with Putin as president. His popularity escalated among Russians, who saw how his country once again appeared powerful and economically booming. But clashes with Chechen Islamist groups continued for years. Among the most terrible episodes was the taking of more than 900 hostages in a theater in Moscow in 2002. 130 people died in the attempt to liberate the theater, most of them due to the gas used by Russian special forces. In 2004, in the assault on a school in North Ossetia that had been taken over by Chechen rebels, more than 300 people were killed, including 156 children.

Putin was ruthless toward the rebels. And if under Yeltsin the economy was stifled, under Putin Russia saw exponential growth in its GDP. In 2000, his first year as president, it grew 10%. And in the following years, between 2001 and 2008, the Russian economy grew by an average of 6.6% annually. Putin cut taxes, raised salaries in the areas of Health and Education, expanded social benefits and considerably reduced poverty. As he grew in popularity, Putin began to shield his power through constitutional amendments and laws. In 2008 his first two terms ended and his co-supporter Dmitry Medvedev won the elections, Putin was named prime minister.

Medvedev proposed a constitutional amendment extending the presidential term from 4 to 6 years and the Russian Parliament approved it. And in 2012 Putin returned to the presidency. In 2020 he took a further step and submitted constitutional reforms to a referendum, which were approved by almost eighty percent of the population, and which opened up the possibility of being re-elected until 2030. At the same time that Putin became increasingly powerful, The persecution of the voices that opposed him and his main leaders also grew. And this began to generate tensions with the West. In 2006, Russian opposition leader Alexander Litvinenko died of polonium poisoning in the United Kingdom, after exposing corruption in Moscow.

In March 2018, another former agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in the city of Salisbury and nearly died. The same thing happened in August 2020,   with the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, after he made public complaints against Putin. Although Putin's government denies any involvement in these events, Western governments have said that Russian agents have been behind these attacks and therefore imposed economic sanctions on Russia. According to his opponents, the persecution also extended to artists or businessmen who have shown their disagreement with Putin's government. Like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the country's main oligarch and one of the richest men in the world, who financed Putin's opponents and was later accused of fraud and tax evasion, for which he lost part of his fortune.

He later received a pardon and left the country. During the first 10 years of his mandate, Putin maintained a good relationship with Western countries. As an example, in 2001 when the September 11 attacks occurred in the United States, he was one of the first leaders to call President George W. Bush. And economic ties between Russia   and Europe strengthened in this first decade. In fact, it was at this time that the Nord Stream gas pipeline connecting Russia, the world's largest gas producer, with Europe was built. Although it was always an ambiguous relationship. And many in the West also began to see signs of authoritarianism.

For example, a quarter of the most powerful government personnel were in the hands of members of the secret service. And while signing an agreement with Germany for gas supplies, Putin regained state control of the oil giant Gazprom and put an end to direct elections for governors without encountering major objections from Europe to these measures. Another key moment in relations between Putin and Western powers was the civil war in Syria. Bashar Al Assad's family regime was close to Russia since the time of the Soviet Union. And it remained one of Moscow's main allies when the civil war broke out in 2011.

Suspected of Assad's use of chemical weapons against rebels and civilians, the United States threatened to get involved in the war, but did not have the support of the European allies. The support of Putin's Russia, especially with aerial bombardments, was decisive in guaranteeing Assad control in territories in the hands of the rebels and the Islamic State. With this, Russia, alongside Syria and Iran, reinforced an axis of opposition to Western influence in the Middle East. However,   the biggest breaking point between Russia and the West is due to what we mentioned at the beginning,   what analysts identify as Putin's imperial ambitions.

Already in 2008, Russia's brief war against Georgia had raised another alarm. The conflict began when Georgian forces bombed the breakaway region of South Ossetia in an attempt to regain control of the rebel province. In response, the Russians, with whom part of the population of that region identified, repelled the attack and advanced through Georgian territory until reaching the capital, Tbilisi. In five days, Russian troops managed to dislodge Georgian soldiers from South Ossetia and the neighboring territory of Abkhazia. And Russia recognized   these regions as independent nations,  contrary to what the European Union,   the United States and even NATO thought.

A strategy similar to the one it used in Crimea in 2014. When a popular uprising removed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power - close to Moscow - Russia advanced into a territory populated by Russian speakers who supported Putin, at a strategic point in the region. Already then there were sanctions and condemnations by the European Union and the United States. And Russia was expelled from the G8, the group of the world's eight largest economies. However, it was the order to invade Ukraine in 2022 that marked the definitive break between Putin and the West. Within the framework of this confrontation, but now through some questioned referendums, Russia annexed four provinces in the east and south of Ukraine.

In a war that has left thousands dead and has put the world under the threat of a global conflict. The global economic fallout, in food supplies and rising energy prices, has contributed to one of the worst inflationary crises in decades. Meanwhile, Putin remains the strong man in an increasingly isolated Russia, with fewer democratic rights and freedoms, and where war is increasingly unpopular.