[Putin] Vladimir Putin KGB, childhood, wealth and political activity summary
[Putin] Vladimir Putin KGB, childhood, wealth and political activity summary
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
2nd and 4th President of the Russian Federation.
He is the President of Russia who has been in power since December 31, 1999, as Prime Minister and Acting President. Although nominally the head of state elected through free elections according to democratic procedures, he is regarded as a de facto dictator due to numerous controversies over electoral fraud and the alleged suppression and assassination of numerous political opponents. In 2020, his constitutional amendment abolished the presidential term limit, effectively paving the way for life in power. He is also the de facto leader of the United Russia Party. Of course, the legal leader of the unified Russia is Dmitry Medvedev, but in fact, the reason Medvedev is the leader is only to show that he adheres to the separation of parties, and Putin also holds the real power.
After formally taking office as the federal president, he made Dmitry Medvedev, who was then the deputy prime minister, as president as a way to nullify the constitution, which barred a three-term term, and he moved to the prime minister and took over the real power. He was again elected president, and Medvedev moved back to prime minister. In the 2016 general election, his political party, United Russia, is expected to gain a majority of the seats, which is expected to further increase his influence. He was re-elected in 2018 and will serve until 2024.
Diplomatically, the suppression of the independence movement of the Chechen Republic, the forcible annexation of Crimea, and the invasion of Ukraine caused criticism from the international community. The later discovery of mass drug injections of Russian athletes at the Olympics also contributed to deteriorating international public opinion.
In addition, Putin was ranked as the most influential person in the world by Forbes for four consecutive years from 2013 to 2016.
The referendum on constitutional amendment on April 22, 2020 was postponed due to the spread of Corona 19, but after a while, according to the results of the referendum, the constitutional amendment bill was passed, allowing the government to remain in power until 2036. Considering Putin's age, it was practically no different than a life in power.
Putin's hidden wealth
Officially, it is reported that Putin earns about $140,000 a year and owns only a small apartment, but his hidden fortune is estimated to exceed $100 billion (about 120 trillion won), The New York Times (NYT) ) reported on the 26th (local time).
Reportedly, little is known about what Putin owns and where it is located. Despite years of speculation and rumors, Putin's fortune is highly uncertain.
However, the ownership of the huge Black Sea mansion called 'Putin's Palace', which is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion (about 1.2 trillion won), has a history of being linked to Putin in various ways, the New York Times reported.
In addition, the luxury yacht 'Graceful' worth 100 million dollars (about 120 billion won) is also called 'Putin's yacht'.
According to the so-called 'Pandora Papers', a document published by the International Association of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that exposes tax evasion and corruption among celebrities around the world, a woman reported to be Putin's lover was found in Monaco for $4.1 million (about 49). It is estimated that he has accumulated assets of 100 million dollars (about 120 billion won), such as owning an apartment worth 100 million won).
The problem is that the United States and its Western allies have very little fortune that could have a direct connection with Putin.
Paul Massaro, senior adviser to the European Council on Security and Cooperation (CSCE), who has advised US Congress on sanctions on Russia, told the New York Times that it was not clear which assets would be affected by the sanctions.
However, he pointed out that this alone is worthwhile because if the US has a limited grasp of Putin's wealth and imposes sanctions if it can, it will affect those who are sanctioned.
A European diplomat also emphasized the symbolic value of the sanctions as a 'politically important signal'.
Putin's name on the U.S.'s "Specially Designated Sanctions" (SDN) puts Venezuela's President Nicholas Maduro, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad alongside other heads of state, such as small but notorious heads of state.
On the other hand, Nate Sivly, a researcher at the Hudson Institute, a think tank, said, "People say that Putin's property has this and that. He smiled bitterly.
Putin's Growth
Born on October 7, 1952 in Leningrad, USSR, to a poor working family. As a child he grew up in an old, shabby communal house of Soviet workers run by rats.
Grandfather Spiridon Ivanovich Putin (1879-1965) was a chef at the dacha of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and his father Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911-1999) was conscripted into the Soviet Navy and served in the submarine unit NKVD After being transferred to the Soviet Army and the Soviet Army, he was a wounded soldier who was seriously wounded in the Siege of Leningrad after participating in the German War. Her mother, Maria Ivanov na Putina (1911–1998), also suffered the tragic loss of many of her family members during the war. Putin's first child, Albert, died early at an early age, and their second child, Victor, died of diphtheria during the Leningrad blockade. Only a married couple in their 30s survived, and after the war, over forty, the third child was Vladimir Putin.
As he himself admitted, Putin in his adolescence was a delinquent youth who, as he admitted, had committed large and small delinquency while hanging out with bad students of his age. As a result, he joined the Fionaire League, a children's organization of the Soviet Communist Party, long late, and his school life was not easy. His father, a devout Orthodox member of the Communist Party, and his mother, a devout Orthodox and part-time worker who had been working as a production worker in a post-war factory and barely promoted to a senior official, tried to correct the young Putin's behavior at the time, but to no avail at first. However, thanks to his parents' consistent and strict home education and the guidance of athletic coaches close to Putin, Putin was reborn as an exemplary student from his high school years, and he excelled in his sluggish grades and party activities.
After spending his school days in the 1960s and 1970s, Putin continued to practice self-defense techniques (judo, etc.) He did not take up physical education as a profession because of his strong desire for espionage, but as an adult, he managed to acquire professional-level self-defense skills, such as taking part in regional championships after obtaining a judo instructor qualification in college. In addition, without losing the somewhat liberal temperament of the delinquent youth, he enjoyed the optimistic social atmosphere of the Soviet Union and a relatively free consumption/cultural life, which began during the Khrushchev thaw (1956~64) and continued briefly until the early days of Leonid Brezhnev's reign. He also secretly enjoyed Western cultural media.
Captivated by the heroic spies appearing in propaganda materials, Putin admired the National Security Council from an early age. On the advice of a public affairs officer at the Leningrad branch of the National Security Council he met as a teenager, he entered the Leningrad State University Law Faculty in 1974 while attending the National Security Council. He was selected as a trainee of the Security Committee (aka KGB).
KGB career
In 1970, he entered the Faculty of Law of the University of St. Petersburg, and in 1975 he published a thesis on “The Most Preferred Principles of Trade in International Law” and obtained a Bachelor of Laws. After he joined the National Security Council (KGB), he was educated at the National Security Council School for the 401st. It is said that Putin first met Anatoly Sopchak, who was an assistant professor of corporate law while he was still at his university.
On August 20, 1991, an August coup took place, and President Putin opposed the military coup. Putin later explained his decision, saying that "starting the military coup, I decided in the opposite direction to where I was" because he thought the choice was difficult but he thought long term thinking was the most important part of his life. .
political activity
Perhaps because Korea has a relatively distant geopolitical distance from Russia compared to the United States and Europe, caricatures of Putin and memes such as radioactive tea are popular on the Korean Internet, and they are often used as jokes about the dignity of Putin. But if you look at Putin's actual actions, he is simply a dictator himself. The radioactive tea meme was also made as a satire on Russia's ruthlessness in purging those who oppose his regime, and the feeling of a ruthless dictator grew stronger afterward, when his nemesis, Alexei Navalny, was nearly poisoned. .
In the former Soviet Union, after the death of Joseph Stalin, the term of office of the generals was strictly adhered to. Also, Russia's democracy collapsed as soon as it started in 1992 amid the rapid transformation of Boris Yeltsin, but it is Putin who completely destroyed the nominally existing democracy in Russia. Putin is criticized for crushing democracy because it makes him unthinkable to question, criticize, or otherwise slander the current government while playing with the Russian constitution, and in fact, journalists are killed or gone missing. First of all, among dictators, they show love for their country and have a good image compared to many inhumane acts, but in the end they are just dictators who can't even gamble.
Media oppression is particularly severe, for example, in the Chechen War, a human rights lawyer accused of war crimes by the Russian army was shot dead in downtown Moscow in broad daylight, and an anti-government journalist was assassinated at his home. Also known as the victim of polonium tea, Aleksandr Litvinenko was killed while contacting an Italian journalist to trace the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter for her friend Novaya Gazeta, who was also assassinated at home. In April 2014, a book compiled by Anna Politkovskaya was published, and the subtitle of this book was overwhelming. 'Report on the failure, cynicism and helplessness of democracy in Russia.' According to her, Russian democracy was already in crisis in 1996, during the Yeltsin era, and she was sentenced to death after the unified Russia won the general election in December 2003.
Even if the assassination is not suspected, Putin's anti-democratic actions are not alone. When a fire broke out in Moscow's Ostankino Tower, a television reception tower in Moscow, most TVs in Moscow had been shut down during the fire. Up to this point, it's just a fire of unknown cause... The problem was that public opinion at that time was quite bad about the Chechen War and Putin's rule, and around the time of the fire, major documents from anti-government media were confiscated. In addition, while the radio waves of broadcasting stations were restored one by one, the radio waves of anti-government broadcasting stations were also restored last.
However, at least officially, it does not execute political prisoners and does not build political prison camps. This is because Russia claims to be a democracy both internally and externally, unlike North Korea, Iran, Singapore, or China or Vietnam, where Russia has systematically blocked criticism, or China or Vietnam, which officially advocates a one-party dictatorship. The reason why they look at them to some extent is because they want to give the outside impression that they are a person who allows free criticism of themselves. First of all, the reason that Putin is still able to sit in power is not like a gym election, but because he was elected by the people, at least outwardly. Is Putin a 'dictator'? Of course, the continuous evidence of election fraud in the Russian presidential election and suppression of the media is just a mask of a dictator.
Some argue that Putin's political abilities should not simply be judged through the eyes of the West, arguing that it was Putin's political ability to economically develop Russia, which was falling apart under Boris Yeltsin. First of all, in Russia during the Boris Yeltsin era, which was loved the most in the West and praised as the embodiment of democracy, in reality, corruption and corruption were rampant under the guise of social collapse, and the emerging conglomerate oligarch, who monopolized various profits, was taking advantage of economic changes. . In addition, he declared a default in 1998 without thinking about the monopoly and corruption of his relatives, and checks against the chaebols and the mafia, and was criticized as a double tactic, saying that he had no money. It is better for this Russian reality.
Advocates of Putin's coercive rule claim that Putin wiped out the opposing oligarchy and the Red Mafia, which made Russia more open to the middle class through structural reforms and oil money. Economic advocates of strong rule believe that, at its root, "It is unreasonable to operate Western democracy without an internal basis for democracy." Critics of this view argue that it was the Yeltsin-Putin regime that smashed its internal foundations, citing examples of the rapid liberalization of Poland and more Eastern European countries that had very little democratic experience.
Some explain the difference between India and China. For example, India is an unstable democracy and China is a one-party dictatorship with high economic growth. With the exception of Putin, it is the deeply divided left-wing groups and the very dangerous far-rights who are getting the votes next. In fact, Russia currently has no alternative other than Putin. Of course, Yeltsin and Putin both printed out all the alternative forces, but from the standpoint of voters who have to cast their votes right now, it is a case that shows that in a democratic election, they also choose the lesser evil, not the best.
But there are many loopholes in the logic of defending Putin as an economic achievement. A representative example is the criticism that his performance was winning the lottery due to a temporary rise in oil prices. This is because he failed to transform the industrial structure into a form favorable for long-term development, such as manufacturing and cultural industries. Moreover, the new group that came in after overthrowing the emerging conglomerate Oligarch were also Putin's friends. All of the oil and natural gas-related companies that are the biggest pillar of Russia's economy were controlled by those linked to Putin. A prime example is Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas company, whose management is filled with all of Putin's friends, KGB juniors, people from unified Russia, and people from St. Petersburg, a trend called Fieserz. In addition, major industries such as telecommunications, electricity, transportation, and railroads have all been controlled by pro-Putin figures, and huge amounts of money are disappearing due to opaque accounting. In particular, it is speculated that Putin and a group of close associates directly control roughly 15% to 30% of Russia's GDP.
As a result, it is virtually impossible to improve the Russian economy, which is concentrated on the export of resources such as oil and natural gas. In order to stabilize the Russian economy crying and laughing at the fluctuations in energy prices, it is necessary to change the industrial structure (diversification such as nurturing light industry, heavy industry, high-tech industry, service industry, cultural industry, etc.) is necessary. There is no way to actively make an effort to reduce the weight of the energy industry. In addition, economic reform inevitably requires short-term labor, and the burden on the people in the process is inevitably high. Considering that the main reason Putin is supported is that he has made Russia's dying economy more livable through the export of energy resources, it is unclear whether Putin will be willing to endure the pain of reform, even if it is temporary.
However, it can also be said that Putin's lesson is clear. Even if there is a temporary rise in oil prices, there are many countries that are under the curse of resources. On the other hand, the supporters argue that the achievements of making Russia, which had been completely destroyed by Elchin, into what it is today should be acknowledged. In a way, it is the egg of Columbus, but the fact that 20 million people, or 16% of the Russian population, are poor, it shows that even if the national economy develops, the people's standard of living is difficult to improve easily, and they did not pay attention to it. In particular, after the U.S. and European sanctions were imposed after the Ukraine crisis, the Russian economy deteriorated further. In fact, the poverty rate also fell steadily during the 15 years of Vladimir Putin's rule, reaching 11% in 2014. However, due to the Ukraine crisis, it rose again to 16%. In 1996, about a third of Russia's population was living in poverty, but at that time Russia was not fortunate enough to rise in oil prices, and Putin also actively supported Yeltsin's policies.
For example, on March 29, 2010, there was an attack by terrorists at the Parq Kulturi metro station. It was a big event that killed at least 30 people, and Putin wrote of his wrath this way: "The terrorists will be crushed."
On January 26, 2011, after a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, killed 35 people and injured more than 160, Putin said: "Whoever it was, whatever the circumstances, they will pay the price. "He said.
In addition to the dictatorship, he built a foothold for dictatorship throughout his tenure. The Russian general election was originally a '50-50' hybrid system of electoral districts and party lists, but Putin changed it to a 100% party list system. Accordingly, seats were allocated according to the percentage of the votes only when they received more than 7% of the votes, and parties that received less than 7% of the votes were not allowed to enter the parliament. It also changed the law to require either the House of Representatives or the signatures of two million people to register a presidential candidate. Putin's side says it's to prevent the swarm of small candidates.
In addition, the direct election system of local autonomy was effectively replaced with a presidential appointment system (local self-government trunk election system). Prior to Putin, the heads of local governments were elected directly, but after Putin took office, the party that won the parliamentary election submitted three suitable candidates to the president, and the president decided and appointed the group head. It is also famous that the term of office of the president was extended from four years to six years when the vice president Medvedev took office.
There is a saying that now, like China, there is a censorship system that hates criticism, suppresses it, and does not listen at all. And it is partnering with China to spur the Internet censorship network. In addition, they are making excuses that do not seem like an excuse that the Internet is a CIA project.
The president for life said he would not. It's not good for himself, he says, because it's not good for Russia. This is not only unsightly internally and externally that he is in power until his death in Russia, which is an institutionally democratic country, but as Putin, who wants to leave his name as a great politician in history, if he tries to rule for life and is ousted due to unexpected circumstances or a civil revolution. It is very likely that he is sincere, as he can end up being denied even the best things he has done like Robert Mugabe, let alone a hero. In this case, it will be similar to Nur-Sultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, who retired in 2019. However, when asked if he would run for the 2018 presidential election, he answered, "It will depend on the circumstances of Russia and his own mood."
On February 27, 2015, opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who criticized Putin, was killed by four bullets at night. Putin has officially denounced Nemtsov's murder, but given that the police are cleaning the scene, it's probably difficult to expect a proper investigation result.
This is sometimes interpreted as a situation where Kadyrov kills Nemtsov at will and Putin closes his eyes. It is not convincing at all that Kadyrov has no interest in such a thing, and that he goes about killing politicians in central politics in Moscow, the heart of Putin's power.
On March 23, 2017, Denis Voronenkov, a former member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, while speaking anti-Kremlin remarks after exiling to Ukraine, was shot and killed mysteriously in the city of Kyiv. The murderer of Voronenkov is a member of the Ukrainian State Guard, but according to the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine, he was subordinated to the Russian FSB.
The mayor of Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city by population, was elected as the mayor of Yekaterinburg, a very rare opposition party in Russia. and returned it to the concierge.
It is said that if you support political opponents or dissidents, you will unwittingly build up a pile of debt. It is known for making its own Internet system like China, and also for creating a Russian version of Wikipedia.
On March 10, 2020, he expressed his support for a constitutional amendment that would allow him to try again in 2024, raising concerns. Of course, Putin has given the proviso that it is possible only with a ruling from the Constitutional Court, but it is impossible for the Russian Constitutional Court to make a ruling that goes against Putin's intentions in the first place. Assuming that the constitutional amendments are passed and Putin is re-elected, Putin will be in power until 2036. In the subsequent referendum on constitutional amendment, the constitutional amendment bill was passed and became a reality.
According to Navalny, Putin's adversary on January 19, 2021, it has a secret palace that is about 39 times larger than that of the small European country of Monaco.
In the end, the Ukrainian War made him the Hitler of the 21st century, and like many dictators, it seems to have a disastrous end.