Putin's Russia

“By the end of the year, Russia will have a new president. And it won’t be Putin.”

— Financial oligarch Boris Berezovsky in the summer of 2001.

The political roadside is littered with failed predictions and ill-advised prognoses. As it turns out, Berezovsky became the outsider and Vladimir Putin holds the Kremlin reigns firmly in his hands. On the occasion of the Russian president’s 50th birthday, Russian Life decided to look back at the events and decisions that have shaped the first three years of Putin’s rule.