Russian President Vladimir Putin - All You Need To Know

Vladimir Putin: From spy to president

• Born October 07,1952 in Leningrad (now St Petersburg)
• Studies law and joins KGB after university
• Serves as a spy in communist East Germany - some ex-KGB comrades later get top state posts in Putin era
• 1990s - top aide to St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who had previously taught him law
• Enters Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin in 1997, made chief of Federal Security Service (the FSB - main successor of the KGB), then prime minister
• New Year's Eve, 1999 - Yeltsin quits and names him acting president
• Easily wins presidential election in March 2000
• Wins a second term in 2004
• Is barred from running for a third successive term by the Russian constitution, but instead becomes prime minister
• Wins a third presidential term in 2012