Who is Vladimir Putin?

Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia and has been leading the country for more than 22 years.

He was born on 7 October 1952 in what used to be Leningrad and is now St. Petersburg, Russia. He didn't come from a rich background and was born into a working-class family.

Putin’s academic results were not his strong point at school. He was reportedly very sporty when growing up and practiced judo and samba, which is a Russian combat sport.

According to the Russian government, Putin wanted to work in intelligence even before he had finished high school.

It wasn’t until he had graduated from college that he was then recruited by the KGB (former main security agency for the Soviet Union), and served with them for 15 years.

In 1983, he married a flight attendant named Lyudmila, whom he had two children with.

His political career began when he and his family moved to Moscow in 1996.

In 2014, Putin was ranked the world’s most powerful person by Forbes.

On 24 February 2022, the president ordered the invasion of Ukraine under the pretext of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’.

To find out more about the former intelligence officer, watch Yahoo UK’s explainer video.