Putin Rises to Power in Russia
Vladimir Putin's appointment as Prime Minister (August 1999) and acting President (December 1999) following Yeltsin's surprise resignation culminated a political ascent from obscure St Petersburg city administrator to the head of the FSB (the KGB's successor) and then Moscow's political centre. The apartment building bombings of September 1999 — attributed by the Russian government to Chechen terrorists, with disputed evidence of FSB involvement — provided Putin with a national security rationale for the Second Chechen War, which he prosecuted with a brutality that the first war (1994-1996) lacked. The military campaign's early success, combined with the contrast to Yeltsin's alcoholic dysfunction, provided Putin with the popularity base that won him the March 2000 presidential election with 53%. Putin's first two terms (2000-2008) were defined by the consolidation of state power over the oligarchs (Khodorkovsky's arrest, 2003), the TV media, and regional governors (abolished by Kremlin appointment). The 2008 constitution's two-term limit produced the 'castling' (Putin as PM, Medvedev as President 2008-2012) before Putin returned for a third term in 2012 — a return accompanied by the largest domestic protests of his rule. His subsequent turn toward confrontation with the West — Crimea annexation (2014), Syria intervention (2015), Ukraine invasion (2022) — reflected a strategic calculus that Russia's internal stability required an external threat narrative.
- Year: 1999 CE
- Category: Political
