From spy to president: The rise of Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin has been ruling Russia since 1999. In that time he's shaped the country into an authoritarian and militaristic society. He successfully invaded two of Russia's neighbors and strengthened ties with Syria and Iran. He's intent on pushing back against the Western world order... and it appears to be working. [Vladimir Putin, 17 years in power. The most powerful man in the world]

To understand how one man could have such a powerful influence on his country, you need to go back to the chaos and corruption that gripped Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. When the Berlin walll fell, a 40 year old Putin was working as an undercover spy in East Germany for the Soviet security agency

the KGB. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 new countries, including the new Russian Federation. In Putin's eyes Russia had just lost two million square miles of territory. He later called this a major geopolitical disaster of the century. Lamenting that tens of millions of his co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. The new government had to sell off nearly

45,000 public businesses like energy, mining, and communication companies that had been run by the communist regime. And it was chaos. The Russian economy was in a freefall and all these companies ended up in the hands of a few extremely wealthy men, known today as Russia's oligarchs. At the same time the new Russian state was having a hard time

establishing itself. Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin was wildly unpopular for cooperating with the west. And to make matters worse he was an alcoholic and many Russians thought he was an embarrassment. In order to stay in power, he leaned on the support of these oligarchs, surrendering an immense amount of political power to them. This graph