President Putin himself commented on this aspect of the investigation while questioned about the investigation into Yukos in September 2003.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stated the ruling had an " obvious anti-Russian subtext " and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin commented about the ruling " I can't quite understand why she got those seven years ".

He held the position from 2000 until Putin sacked Mikhail Kasyanov's Cabinet in March 2004.

In the history of bilateral relations, the first Russian president to come on an official visit to Luxembourg was Vladimir Putin on 24 May 2007.

On 2 March 2008, Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of Russia, whilst Putin became Prime Minister.

Putin returned to the presidency following the 2012 presidential elections, and Medvedev was appointed Prime Minister.

According Steve White, during the Putin presidency Russia made clear that it had no intention of establishing a " second edition " of the American or British political system, but rather a system that was closer to Russia's own traditions and circumstances.

" The textbook History of Russia and the World in the 20th century ( 2004 ), by Nikita Zagladin, replaced the National History: 20th century, by Igor Dolutsky ; Zagladin ’ s textbook was produced under the aegis of President Vladimir Putin, who wanted a more patriotic textbook.

Due to a common enemy, diplomatic cooperation between the two countries dramatically got back on track during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Vladimir Putin was elected the President, and then the Prime Minister of Russia, and along with Chinese leader Hu Jintao opposed UN Peacekeepers in Darfur.

After the September 11 attacks, Vladimir Putin began to tell the United States that Iraq was preparing terrorist attacks against the United States.

For sixteen years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.

Putin won the 2000 presidential election and was re-elected in 2004.

Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008.

This time the rebellion was brutally crushed by Vladimir Putin.

When appointed, Putin was a relatively unknown politician, but he quickly established himself both in public opinion and in Yeltsin's estimation as a trusted head of government, largely due to the Second Chechen War.

After the success of political forces close to Putin in the December 1999 parliamentary elections, Yeltsin evidentially felt confident enough in Putin that he resigned from the presidency on December 31, six months before his term was due to expire.

This was the first time such wave of protests took place during the Putin administration.

The reform has hurt the popularity of the Russian government, but Putin personally was still popular, with a 77 % approval rating.

Cardoso with Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2002. Cardoso, often nicknamed " FHC ", was elected with the support of a heterodox alliance of his own Social Democratic Party, the PSDB, and two right-wing parties, the Liberal Front Party ( PFL ) and the Brazilian Labour Party ( PTB ).

In 2007, he was nominated by president Vladimir Putin for re-election, and Khloponin was elected by the legislative assembly for the second term.

The hostage-takers demanded termination of the use of artillery and air forces in Chechnya starting the next day ( Russian forces ceased using heavy weapons until September 28 ), a halt to the notorious zachistka (" mopping-up ") operations, and that President of Russia Vladimir Putin should publicly declare that he was striving to stop the war in Chechnya.

" It was commonly assumed Putin was threatening the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

President Putin was unhappy with the coverage of the hostage crisis by NTV, the last nationwide TV channel effectively independent of the government.

These new policies prompted renewed fears in Russia that Putin was systematically taking control of all Russian media.

Kim Jong-il talking with Vladimir Putin during their 2001 meetingIn 1994, North Korea and the United States signed an Agreed Framework which was designed to freeze and eventually dismantle the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid in producing two power-generating nuclear reactors.

The election results also made clear that Putin was going to win the 2000 presidential election, which resulted in competitors Luzhkov and Yevgeni Primakov dropping out.

Putin repeatedly congratulated Yanukovych while the results were still contested, which was soon to embarrass both parties.

Communist support started to ebb, given the widespread electoral support at the time for the government's invasion of Chechnya in September 1999 and the popularity of Yeltsin's new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who was widely seen as the ailing Yeltsin's heir apparent.

He was also an uncompromising critic of the Putin government's reforms of the housing and utilities sector and of the energy sector.

During the campaign, on 2 February 2004, in his article in the Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta newspapers he accused incumbent President Vladimir Putin of having bombed Moscow in 1999 just to make way for the Chechnya attack, but also to be an oligarch involved in shady business activities with Yury Kovalchuk, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko, KiNEx and the Russia Bank, which allegedly swallowed up a vast share of the nation's financial flows.

During Putin presidency, many oligarchs came under fire for various illegal activities, particularly tax evasion in the businesses they acquired.

In September 2011, Putin and Medvedev announced he would seek a third, non-consecutive term in the 2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to large-scale protests in many Russian cities.

Built on a large area of council-owned land, the city council and Italian national government were recently involved in a trade-off with the Putin government in Moscow, exchanging the piece of land on which the church stands, for, albeit indirectly, a military barracks near Bari's central railway station.

This made Putin acting president and gave Putin ample opportunity to position himself as frontrunner for the Russian presidential election held on March 26, 2000, which he won.

Putin came into office at an ideal time: after the devaluation of the ruble in 1998, which boosted demand for domestic goods, and while world oil prices were rising.

In a campaign speech in February 2004, for example, Putin called the dismantlement of the Soviet Union a " national tragedy on an enormous scale ," from which " only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained.

From 6 to 8 June 2007 the G8 Summit took place in Heiligendamm, which included participation by Stephen Harper ( Canada ), Nicolas Sarkozy ( France ), Angela Merkel ( Germany ), Romano Prodi ( Italy ), Shinzō Abe ( Japan ), Vladimir Putin ( Russia ), George W. Bush ( USA ), Tony Blair ( UK ), and José Manuel Durão Barroso ( EU ).

The Kremlin said that President Vladimir Putin had visited the musician on Monday in the hospital, which prompted speculation that he was in a serious condition.

On June 16, 2001, he helped to arrange the first meeting of the U. S. President George W. Bush with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was held in the Upper Carniolan estate of Brdo pri Kranju.

She was subsequently awarded the Order of Courage on 21 June 2002 by President Vladimir Putin, to which she replied, " The news was entirely surprising ".

The Russian government under President Vladimir Putin repealed a law which had banned the import of used nuclear fuel, which makes it possible for Russians to offer a reprocessing service for clients outside Russia ( similar to that offered by BNFL. PUREX chemistry The current method of choice is to use the PUREX liquid-liquid extraction process which uses a tributyl phosphate hydrocarbon mixture to extract both uranium and plutonium from nitric acid.

On 18 September 2009, Russian Prime Minister Putin welcomed Obama's plans for missile defense which may include stationing American Aegis armed warships in the Black Sea.

In 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed restart of competition but this time between Russia, China and Central Asian countries which are mostly members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

On 18 September 2009, Russian Prime Minister Putin welcomed Obama's plans for missile defense which may include stationing American Aegis armed warships in the Black Sea.

In an open letter to Putin published in Kommersant Berezovsky, then a Duma deputy, said that he would be obliged to vote against the president's legislative project, which was " directed toward changing the state's structure " and represented a " threat to Russia's territorial integrity and democracy.

I am doing everything in my power to limit his time frame, and I am really thinking of returning to Russia after Putin collapses, which he will.

Putin was reluctant to take over the directorship, but once appointed conducted a thorough reorganisation, which included the dismissal of most of the FSB's top personnel.

Instead of the " communism versus capitalism " dichotomy that had dominated the political discourse in the 1990s, in the 1999 — 2000 electoral cycle Putin started to emphasize another reason to vote for his party: stability, which was yearned for by Russian citizens after a decade of chaotic revolutionary change.

For example, Yabloko and the Union of Rightist Forces seemed to spend more effort attacking each other than Putin, which made it easier for United Russia to win over liberal voters on the strength of market reforms under Putin.

When they agreed to swap jobs in November 2011, with Putin retaking his old position of president which Medvedev had held for four years ( because Putin was constitutionally barred from having a third term in a row ), many in Russia called this " castling " (" рокировка "-" rokirovka ")-after the move in chess when the king and a castle swap sides.