Vladimir Putin Part III

 

United Kingdom

In 2003, relations between Russia and the United Kingdom deteriorated when the United Kingdom granted political asylum to Putin's former patron, oligarch Boris Berezovsky. This deterioration was intensified by allegations that the British were spying and making secret payments to pro-democracy and human rights groups. A survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2022 found Putin to be among the least popular foreign leaders, with 8% of British respondents holding a positive opinion.

Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

The end of 2006 brought more strained relations in the wake of the death by polonium poisoning in London of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who became an MI6 agent in 2003. In 2007, the crisis in relations continued with expulsion of four Russian envoys over Russia's refusal to extradite former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi to face charges in the murder of Litvinenko.

In 2015–2016, the British Government conducted an inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko. Its report states, "The FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin." The report outlined some possible motives for the murder, including Litvinenko's public statements and books about the alleged involvement of the FSB in mass murder, and what was "undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism" between Putin and Litvinenko, led to the murder.

Poisoning of Sergei Skripal

On 4 March 2018, former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury. Ten days later, the British government formally accused the Russian state of attempted murder, a charge which Russia denied. After the UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats (an action which would later be responded to with a Russian expulsion of 23 British diplomats), British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on 16 March that it was "overwhelmingly likely" Putin had personally ordered the poisoning of Skripal. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the allegation "shocking and unpardonable diplomatic misconduct".

Latin America

Putin and his successor, Medvedev, enjoyed warm relations with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Much of this has been through the sale of military equipment; since 2005, Venezuela has purchased more than $4 billion worth of arms from Russia. In September 2008, Russia sent Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela to carry out training flights. In November 2008, both countries held a joint naval exercise in the Caribbean. Earlier in 2000, Putin had re-established stronger ties with Fidel Castro's Cuba.

“You express the best masculine qualities,” Putin told Jair Bolsonaro in 2020. “You look for solutions in all matters, always putting above all the interests of your people, your country, leaving out your own personal issues.” Political scientist Oliver Stuenkel noted, “Among Brazil's right-wing populists, Putin is seen as someone who is anti-woke, and that is seen as something that is definitely appealing to Bolsonaro. He is a strongman, and that is very inspiring to Bolsonaro. He would like to be someone who concentrates as much power.”

Australia and the South Pacific

In September 2007, Putin visited Indonesia and in doing so became the first Russian leader to visit the country in more than 50 years. In the same month, Putin also attended the APEC meeting held in Sydney, Australia, where he met with Prime Minister John Howard, and signed a uranium trade deal for Australia to sell uranium to Russia. This was the first visit by a Russian president to Australia. Putin again visited Australia for 2014 G20 Brisbane summit. The Abbott Government denounced Putin's use of military force in Ukraine in 2014 as "bullying" and "utterly unacceptable". Amid calls to ban Putin from attending the 2014 G20 Summit, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he would "shirtfront" (challenge) the Russian leader over the shooting down of MH17 by Russian backed rebels, which had killed 38 Australians. Putin denied responsibility for the killings. South Pacific Nations condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the invasion was "unprovoked, unjust and illegal" and labeled Putin a "thug". New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denounced Putin as a "bully". Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama tweeted "Fiji and our fellow Pacific Island Countries have united as nations of peace-loving people to condemn the conflict in Ukraine", while the Solomon Islands called Putin's war a "violation of the rule of law".

Middle East and North Africa

On 16 October 2007, Putin visited Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit in Tehran, where he met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This was the first visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to Iran since Joseph Stalin's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943, and marked a significant event in Iran-Russia relations. At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our (Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions".

Putin was quoted as describing Iran as a "partner", though he expressed concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme.

In April 2008, Putin became the first Russian president who visited Libya. Putin condemned the foreign military intervention of Libya, he called UN resolution as "defective and flawed," and added "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades." Upon the death of Muammar Gaddafi, Putin called it as "planned murder" by the US, saying: "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was killed," and "There was blood all over. Is that what they call a democracy?"

From 2000 to 2010, Russia sold around $1.5 billion worth of arms to Syria, making Damascus Moscow's seventh-largest client. During the Syrian civil war, Russia threatened to veto any sanctions against the Syrian government, and continued to supply arms to its regime.

Putin opposed any foreign intervention. In June 2012, in Paris, he rejected the statement of French president François Hollande who called on Bashar Al-Assad to step down. Putin echoed Assad's argument that anti-regime militants were responsible for much of the bloodshed. He also talked about previous NATO interventions and their results, and asked "What is happening in Libya, in Iraq? Did they become safer? Where are they heading? Nobody has an answer".

On 11 September 2013, The New York Times published an op-ed by Putin urging caution against US intervention in Syria and criticizing American exceptionalism. Putin subsequently helped to arrange for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. In 2015, he took a stronger pro-Assad stance and mobilized military support for the regime. Some analysts have summarized Putin as being allied with Shiites and Alawites in the Middle East.

In October 2019, Putin visited the United Arab Emirates, where six agreements were struck with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. One of them included shared investments between Russian sovereign wealth fund and the Emirati investment fund Mubadala. The two nations signed deals worth over $1.3bn, in energy, health and advance technology sectors.

On 22 October 2021, Putin highlighted the "unique bond" between Russia and Israel during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Public image

The director of the Levada Center, Denis Volkov, stated in 2015 that drawing any conclusions from Russian poll results or comparing them to polls in democratic states was pointless as there is no real political competition in Russia, where, unlike in democratic states, Russian voters aren't offered any "credible alternatives" and public opinion is primarily formed by state-controlled media which promotes those in power and discredits any alternative candidates.

In a June 2007 public opinion survey, Putin's approval rating was 81%, the second-highest of any leader in the world that year. In January 2013, at the time of the 2011–2013 Russian protests, Putin's approval rating fell to 62%, the lowest figure since 2000 and a ten-point drop over two years.

In May 2014, Putin's approval rating hit 83%, its highest since 2008. After EU and U.S. sanctions against Russian officials as a result of the crisis in Ukraine, Putin's approval rating reached 87%, in a survey published on 6 August 2014. In February 2015, based on new domestic polling, Putin was ranked the world's most popular politician. In June 2015, Putin's approval rating climbed to 89%, an all-time high. In 2016, his approval rating was 81%.

Observers saw Putin's high approval ratings in 2010's as a consequence of significant improvements in living standards, and Russia's reassertion of itself on the world scene during his presidency.

Despite high approval for Putin, public confidence in the Russian economy was low, dropping to levels in 2016 that rivaled the recent lows in 2009 at the height of the global economic crisis. Just 14% of Russians in 2016 said their national economy was getting better, and 18% said this about their local economies.

Putin's performance in reining in corruption is unpopular among Russians. Newsweek reported in June 2017 that "An opinion poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center indicated that 67 percent held Putin personally responsible for high-level corruption". Corruption is a significant problem in Russia.

Vladimir Putin approval 1999–2020 (Levada, 2020)

In July 2018, Putin's approval rating fell to 63% and just 49% would vote for Putin if presidential elections were held. Levada poll results published in September 2018 showed Putin's personal trustworthiness levels at 39% (a decline from 59% in November 2017) with the main contributing factor being the presidential support of the unpopular pension reform and economic stagnation. In October 2018, two-thirds of Russians surveyed in the Levada poll agreed that "Putin bears full responsibility for the problems of the country" which has been attributed to a decline in a popular belief in "good tsar and bad boyars", a traditional attitude towards justifying failures at the top of the ruling hierarchy in Russia.

In January 2019, the percentage of Russians trusting Putin hit a then-historic minimum – 33.4%. It declined to 31.7% in May 2019. This finding led to a dispute between the VCIOM and President's administration office, who accused it of incorrectly using an open question, after which VCIOM repeated the poll with a closed question getting 72.3%. Nonetheless, in April 2019 Gallup poll showed a record number of Russians (20%) willing to permanently emigrate from Russia.

The decline is even larger in the 17–25 age group, "who find themselves largely disconnected from the country's aging leadership, nostalgic Soviet rhetoric and nepotistic agenda", according to a report prepared by Vladimir Milov. Putin's approval rating among young Russians was 32% in January 2019. The percentage of people willing to emigrate permanently in this age group was 41%. 60% had favorable views of the United States (three times more than in the 55+ age group). Decline in support for the president and the government is visible in other polls, such as a rapidly growing readiness to protest against poor living conditions.

In May 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis, Putin's approval rating was 67.9%, measured by VCIOM when respondents were presented a list of names (closed question), and 27% when respondents were expected to name politicians they trust (open question). In a closed-question survey conducted by the Levada Center, Putin's approval rating was 59%. This has been attributed to continued post-Crimea economic stagnation but also an apathetic response to the pandemic crisis in Russia.

In another May 2021 Levada poll, 33% indicated Putin in response to "who would you vote for this weekend?" among Moscow respondents and 40% outside of Moscow. The Levada Center survey released in October 2021 found 53% of respondents saying they trusted Putin.

Some observers noted what they described as a "generational struggle" among Russians over perception of Putin's rule, with younger Russians more likely to be against Putin and his policies and older Russians more likely to accept the narrative presented by state-controlled media in Russia.

Polls conducted in November 2021 oin the wake of the failure of a Russian COVID-19 vaccination campaign indicated that distrust of Putin personally is one of the major contributing factors for vaccine hesitancy among citizens, with regional polls indicating numbers as low as 20–30% in the Volga Federal District.

Putin giving speech during pro-invasion rally.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, state-controlled television channels, which most Russians get their news from, presented the invasion as a "special military operation" and a liberation mission in line with the government's narrative. The Russian censorship apparatus Roskomnadzor ordered the country's media to employ information only from Russian state sources or face fines and blocks. The Russian media was banned from using the words "war", "invasion" or "aggression" to describe the "special military operation", with various media outlets being blocked as a result.

On 26-28 February 2022, a survey conducted by the independent research group Russian Field found that 58.8% of respondents supported the "special military operation" in Ukraine. According to the poll, in the group of 18-to-24-year-olds, only 29% supported the "special military operation". In late February and mid-March 2022 with an interval of one and a half weeks, two polls conducted by a group of independent Russian sociologists surveyed Russians’ sentiments about the "special military operation" in Ukraine. The results of the poll were obtained by Radio Liberty. Almost three-quarters (71%) of Russians polled declared that they supported the "special military operation" in Ukraine.

When asked how they were affected by the actions of Putin, a third of respondents said they strongly believed that Putin was working in their interests. Another 26 percent said that he was working in their interests to some extent. In general, most Russians believe that it would be better if Putin remained president for as long as possible. Similarly, a telephone survey conducted by independent researchers from 28 February to 1 March found that 58% of Russian respondents approved of the military operation.

A poll by the Levada Center published on 30 March saw Putin's approval rating jump from 71% in February to 83% in March. However, experts warned that the figures may not accurately reflect the public mood, as the public tends to rally around leaders during war and some may be hiding their true opinions, especially with enhanced censorship and a new law prohibiting the dissemination of "fake information" about the military. The Levada Center's director, Denis Volkov, stated that early feelings of "shock and confusion" was being replaced with the belief that Russia was being besieged and that Russians must rally around their leader.

Assessments

Assessments of Putin's character as a leader have evolved during his long reign. His shifting of Russia towards autocracy and weakening of the system of representative government advocated by Boris Yeltsin has met with criticism. Russian dissidents and world leaders now frequently characterize him as a "dictator". Others have offered favorable assessments of his impact on Russia.

Putin was described in 2015 as a "dictator" by political opponent Garry Kasparov, and as the "Tsar of corruption" in 2016 by opposition activist and blogger Alexei Navalny. He was described as a "bully" and "arrogant" by former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and as "self-centered" by the Dalai Lama. Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote in 2014 that the West has demonized Putin. Egon Krenz, former leader of East Germany, said the Cold War never ended, adding: "After weak presidents like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, it is a great fortune for Russia that it has Putin."

Many Russians credit Putin for reviving Russia's fortunes. Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, while acknowledging the flawed democratic procedures and restrictions on media freedom during the Putin presidency, said that Putin had pulled Russia out of chaos at the end of the Yeltsin years, and that Russians "must remember that Putin saved Russia from the beginning of a collapse." In 2015, opposition politician Boris Nemtsov said that Putin was turning Russia into a "raw materials colony" of China. Chechen Republic head and Putin supporter, Ramzan Kadyrov, states that Putin saved both the Chechen people and Russia.

Russia has suffered democratic backsliding during Putin's tenure. Freedom House has listed Russia as being "not free" since 2005. Experts do not generally consider Russia to be a democracy, citing purges and jailing of political opponents, curtailed press freedom, and the lack of free and fair elections. In 2004, Freedom House warned that Russia's "retreat from freedom marks a low point not registered since 1989, when the country was part of the Soviet Union."

The Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Russia as "authoritarian" since 2011, whereas it had previously been considered a "hybrid regime" (with "some form of democratic government" in place). According to political scientist Larry Diamond, writing in 2015, "no serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy".

Following the jailing of the anti-corruption blogger and activist Alexei Navalny in 2018, Forbes wrote: "Putin’s actions are those of a dictator... As a leader with failing public support, he can only remain in power by using force and repression that gets worse by the day." In November 2021, The Economist also noted that Putin had "shifted from autocracy to dictatorship".

Following mounting civilian casualties during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, US president Joe Biden called Putin a war criminal and "murderous dictator". In the 2022 State of the Union Address, Biden said that Putin had "badly miscalculated". The Ukrainian envoy to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya likened Putin to Adolf Hitler. Latvian prime minister Krisjanis Karins also likened the Russian leader to Hitler, saying he was "a deluded autocrat creating misery for millions" and that "Putin is fighting against democracy (...) If he can attack Ukraine, theoretically it could be any other European country".

Lithuania’s foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said "“The battle for Ukraine is a battle for Europe. If Putin is not stopped there, he will go further.” President Macron of France said Putin was "deluding himself". French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced him as a "a cynic and a dictator". UK prime minister Boris Johnson also labeled Putin a "dictator" who had authorized “a tidal wave of violence against a fellow Slavic people".

Cult of personality

Putin has cultivated a cult of personality for himself with an outdoorsy, sporty, tough guy public image, demonstrating his physical prowess and taking part in unusual or dangerous acts, such as extreme sports and interaction with wild animals, part of a public relations approach that, according to Wired, "deliberately cultivates the macho, take-charge superhero image". In 2007, the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published a huge photograph of a shirtless Putin vacationing in the Siberian mountains under the headline "Be Like Putin".

Numerous Kremlinologists have accused Putin of seeking to create a cult of personality around himself, an accusation that the Kremlin has denied. Some of Putin's activities have been criticized for being staged; outside of Russia, his macho image has been the subject of parody. Putin is believed to be self-conscious about his height, which has been estimated by Kremlin insiders at between 155 and 165 centimeters (5 feet 1 inch and 5 feet 5 inches) tall but is usually given at 170 centimeters (5 feet 7 inches).

There are many songs about Putin, and Putin's name and image are widely used in advertisement and product branding. Among the Putin-branded products are Putinka vodka, the PuTin brand of canned food, the Gorbusha Putina caviar, and a collection of T-shirts with his image. In 2015, his advisor Mikhail Lesin was found dead after "days of excessive consumption of alcohol", though his death was later ruled as the result of an accident.

Publication recognition in the United States

In 2007, he was the Time Person of the Year. In 2015, he was No. 1 on the Time's Most Influential People List. Forbes ranked him the World's Most Powerful Individual every year from 2013 to 2016. He was ranked the second most powerful individual by Forbes in 2018.

Putinisms

Putin has produced many aphorisms and catch-phrases known as putinisms. Many of them were first made during his annual Q&A conferences, where Putin answered questions from journalists and other people in the studio, as well as from Russians throughout the country, who either phoned in or spoke from studios and outdoor sites across Russia. Putin is known for his often tough and sharp language, often alluding to Russian jokes and folk sayings.

Putin sometimes uses Russian criminal jargon (known as "fenya" in Russian), albeit not always correctly.

Electoral history

Personal life

Family

On 28 July 1983, Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva, and they lived together in East Germany from 1985 to 1990. They have two daughters, Mariya Putina, born 28 April 1985 in Leningrad, and Yekaterina Putina, born 31 August 1986 in Dresden, East Germany. An investigation by Proekt published in November 2020 alleged that Putin has another daughter, Elizaveta, also known as Luiza Rozova, (born March 2003), with Svetlana Krivonogikh.

In April 2008, the Moskovsky Korrespondent reported that Putin had divorced Lyudmila and was engaged to marry Olympic gold medalist Alina Kabaeva, a former rhythmic gymnast and Russian politician. The story was denied, and the newspaper was shut down shortly thereafter. Putin and Lyudmila continued to make public appearances together as spouses, while the status of his relationship with Kabaeva became a topic of speculation. In the subsequent years, there were frequent unsubstantiated reports that Putin and Kabaeva had multiple children together, although these reports were denied.

On 6 June 2013, Putin and Lyudmila announced that their marriage was over; on 1 April 2014, the Kremlin confirmed that the divorce had been finalized. In 2015, Kabaeva reportedly gave birth to a daughter; Putin is alleged to be the father. In 2019, Kabaeva reportedly gave birth to twin sons by Putin.

Putin has two grandsons, born in 2012 and 2017. His cousin, Igor Putin, was a director at Moscow-based Master Bank and was accused in a number of money-laundering scandals.

Personal wealth

Official figures released during the legislative election of 2007 put Putin's wealth at approximately 3.7 million rubles (US$280,000) in bank accounts, a private 77.4-square-meter (833 sq ft) apartment in Saint Petersburg, and miscellaneous other assets. Putin's reported 2006 income totaled 2 million rubles (approximately $152,000). In 2012, Putin reported an income of 3.6 million rubles ($270,000). Putin has been photographed wearing a number of expensive wristwatches, collectively valued at $700,000, nearly six times his annual salary. Putin has been known on occasion to give watches valued at thousands of dollars as gifts, for example a watch identified as a Blancpain to a Siberian boy he met while on vacation in 2009, and another similar watch to a factory worker the same year.

According to Russian opposition politicians and journalists, Putin secretly possesses a multi-billion-dollar fortune via successive ownership of stakes in a number of Russian companies. According to one editorial in The Washington Post, "Putin might not technically own these 43 aircraft, but, as the sole political power in Russia, he can act like they're his". An RIA Novosti journalist argued that "[Western] intelligence agencies ... could not find anything". These contradictory claims were analyzed by Polygraph.info, which looked at a number of reports by Western (Anders Åslund estimate of $100–160 billion) and Russian (Stanislav Belkovsky estimated of $40 billion) analysts, CIA (estimate of $40 billion in 2007) as well as counterarguments of Russian media. Polygraph concluded:

There is uncertainty on the precise sum of Putin's wealth, and the assessment by the Director of U.S. National Intelligence apparently is not yet complete. However, with the pile of evidence and documents in the Panama Papers and in the hands of independent investigators such as those cited by Dawisha, Polygraph.info finds that Danilov's claim that Western intelligence agencies have not been able to find evidence of Putin's wealth to be misleading— Polygraph.info, "Are 'Putin's Billions' a Myth?"

In April 2016, 11 million documents belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The name of Putin does not appear in any of the records, and Putin denied his involvement with the company. However, various media have reported on three of Putin's associates on the list. According to the Panama Papers leak, close trusted associates of Putin own offshore companies worth US$2 billion in total. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung regards the possibility of Putin's family profiting from this money as plausible.

According to the paper, the US$2 billion had been "secretly shuffled through banks and shadow companies linked to Putin's associates", such as construction billionaires Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, and Bank Rossiya, previously identified by the U.S. State Department as being treated by Putin as his personal bank account, had been central in facilitating this. It concludes that "Putin has shown he is willing to take aggressive steps to maintain secrecy and protect [such] communal assets." A significant proportion of the money trail leads to Putin's best friend Sergei Roldugin. Although a musician, and in his own words, not a businessman, it appears he has accumulated assets valued at $100m, and possibly more. It has been suggested he was picked for the role because of his low profile. There have been speculations that Putin, in fact, owns the funds, and Roldugin just acted as a proxy. Garry Kasparov said that "[Putin] controls enough money, probably more than any other individual in the history of human race".

Residences

Official government residences

As president and prime minister, Putin has lived in numerous official residences throughout the country. These residences include: the Moscow Kremlin, Novo-Ogaryovo in Moscow Oblast, Gorki-9 [ru] near Moscow, Bocharov Ruchey in Sochi, Dolgiye Borody [ru] in Novgorod Oblast, and Riviera in Sochi.

In August 2012, critics of Putin listed the ownership of 20 villas and palaces, nine of which were built during Putin's 12 years in power.

Personal residences

Soon after Putin returned from his KGB service in Dresden, East Germany, he built a dacha in Solovyovka on the eastern shore of Lake Komsomolskoye on the Karelian Isthmus in Priozersky District of Leningrad Oblast, near St. Petersburg. After the dacha burned down in 1996, Putin built a new one identical to the original and was joined by a group of seven friends who built dachas nearby. In 1996, the group formally registered their fraternity as a co-operative society, calling it Ozero ("Lake") and turning it into a gated community.

A massive Italianate-style mansion costing an alleged US$1 billion and dubbed "Putin's Palace" is under construction near the Black Sea village of Praskoveevka. In 2012, Sergei Kolesnikov, a former business associate of Putin's, told the BBC's Newsnight programme that he had been ordered by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to oversee the building of the palace. He also said that the mansion, built on government land and sporting three helipads, plus a private road paid for from state funds and guarded by officials wearing uniforms of the official Kremlin guard service, have been built for Putin's private use. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Kolesnikov's allegations against Putin as untrue, saying that "Putin has never had any relationship to this palace."

On 19 January 2021, two days after Alexei Navalny was detained by Russian authorities upon his return to Russia, a video investigation by him and the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was published accusing Putin of using fraudulently obtained funds to build the estate for himself in what he called "the world's biggest bribe." In the investigation, Navalny said that the estate is 39 times the size of Monaco and cost over 100 billion rubles ($1.35 billion) to construct. It also showed aerial footage of the estate via a drone and a detailed floor-plan of the palace that Navalny said was given by a contractor, which he compared to photographs from inside the palace that were leaked onto the Internet in 2011. He also detailed an elaborate corruption scheme allegedly involving Putin's inner circle that allowed Putin to hide billions of dollars to build the estate.

Pets

Putin has received five dogs from various nation leaders: Konni, Buffy, Yume, Verni and Pasha. Konni died in 2014. When Putin first became president, the family had two poodles, Tosya and Rodeo. They reportedly stayed with his ex-wife Lyudmila after their divorce.

Religion

Putin is Russian Orthodox. His mother was a devoted Christian believer who attended the Russian Orthodox Church, while his father was an atheist. Though his mother kept no icons at home, she attended church regularly, despite government persecution of her religion at that time. His mother secretly baptized him as a baby, and she regularly took him to services.

According to Putin, his religious awakening began after a serious car crash involving his wife in 1993, and a life-threatening fire that burned down their dacha in August 1996. Shortly before an official visit to Israel, Putin's mother gave him his baptismal cross, telling him to get it blessed. Putin states, "I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since." When asked in 2007 whether he believes in God, he responded: "There are things I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease." Putin's rumored confessor is Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov. The sincerity of his Christianity has been rejected by his former advisor Sergei Pugachev.

Sports

Putin watches football and supports FC Zenit Saint Petersburg. He also displays an interest in ice hockey and bandy, and played in a star-studded hockey game on his 63rd birthday.

Putin has been practicing judo since he was 11 years old, before switching to sambo at the age of fourteen. He won competitions in both sports in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). He was awarded eighth dan of the black belt in 2012, becoming the first Russian to achieve the status. Putin also practices karate.[ He co-authored a book entitled Judo with Vladimir Putin in Russian, and Judo: History, Theory, Practice in English (2004). Benjamin Wittes, a black belt in taekwondo and aikido and editor of Lawfare, has disputed Putin's martial arts skills, stating that there is no video evidence of Putin displaying any real noteworthy judo skills.