49 Fun Facts About Vladimir Putin

Putin told parliament in 2005 that the collapse of which state was a geopolitical catastrophe?

The Soviet Union. His reasoning: the break-up left tens of millions of Russians outside Russia's borders, and an 'epidemic of disintegration' then infected Russia itself.

In June 2023 Putin faced a brief armed mutiny led by the boss of which mercenary force?

The Wagner Group. Yevgeny Prigozhin's fighters seized Rostov-on-Don and drove towards Moscow before turning back within a day; two months later he died in a plane crash.

Putin's grandfather Spiridon worked as a personal cook to which two Soviet leaders?

Lenin and Stalin. Putin told the story himself in a 2018 interview; Spiridon outlived both men and kept cooking for the Soviet elite until shortly before he died in 1965, aged 86.

Putin's brother Viktor died in 1942 during which wartime event?

The Siege of Leningrad. Viktor was a toddler when he died of diphtheria in the starving city, and the blockade nearly killed both parents too; Putin was born seven years after the war.

In 2001 Putin delivered most of a speech to a foreign parliament in which language?

German. He told the Bundestag he would switch to 'the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant', polished during his years as a KGB officer in East Germany.

Putin's 1975 university degree was in which subject?

Law. By his own account, as a schoolboy he walked into a KGB office to ask how to become a spy and was told to get a degree first, preferably in law, so he did.

Which American film director sat down with Putin for a series of television interviews broadcast in 2017?

Oliver Stone. During the filming he persuaded Putin to watch Dr. Strangelove with him, the Cold War satire about nuclear war, which the Russian president had never seen.

Researchers found that Putin's economics dissertation lifted pages from a management textbook first published in which country?

The United States. Two Brookings scholars tracked down the 218-page thesis in 2006 and found about 16 pages taken almost word for word from a 1978 text by two University of Pittsburgh professors.

From 1985 to 1990 Putin was posted for the KGB to which city in the GDR?

Dresden. When a crowd gathered outside the KGB villa there in December 1989, he phoned a Red Army tank unit for backup and was told: 'Moscow is silent.'

Putin was a KGB officer in the GDR, yet an ID card found in an archive there in 2018 came from whom?

The Stasi. The pass, issued in 1985 and stamped every three months, got him into the secret police's buildings; the archive says nothing suggests he actually worked for it.

By his own account, what did Putin do with his office's KGB files as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989?

Burned them. 'I personally burned a huge amount of material,' he recalled, adding: 'We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst.'

Putin says he resigned from the KGB on the second day of which crisis?

The 1991 coup against Gorbachev. The KGB's own chairman was one of the plotters, and Putin later said: 'As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on.'

Putin's first political job in 1990 was as an adviser on international affairs to whom?

Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. His former university tutor then chaired the city council and was elected mayor in 1991; when voters threw Sobchak out in 1996, Putin left for Moscow.

Putin's first decree as acting president granted immunity from prosecution to whom?

Boris Yeltsin. Putin signed it on the very day he took over, and the decree on 'guarantees for the former president and members of his family' covered the relatives as well.

As prime minister in 1999, Putin sent troops to crush separatist rebels in which Russian republic?

Chechnya. The offensive followed a wave of deadly apartment bombings, and his vow to wipe out the rebels 'even in the toilet' sent his popularity soaring within weeks.

Putin first became acting president when his predecessor resigned without warning on which day?

New Year's Eve. The resignation on 31 December 1999 stunned Russia but not Putin, who says he was called in two or three weeks earlier and told he would have to take over.

Putin won his first presidential election in 2000 by beating which party's candidate into second place?

The Communist Party. Its leader Gennady Zyuganov had forced the sitting president into a run-off four years earlier, but this time finished on 29 per cent to Putin's 53, so none was needed.

Barred from a third straight term, Putin was prime minister from 2008 to 2012 under which president?

Dmitry Medvedev. He named Putin prime minister within hours of his own inauguration, and in 2011 the two announced they would simply swap jobs.

Russia's economy grew about 7% a year in Putin's first two terms, buoyed by soaring prices for what?

Oil. Along with gas, the windfall let Russia pay off its Soviet-era debts to foreign governments, and to do it ahead of schedule.

Which oligarch, once Putin's patron, was granted asylum by the UK in 2003, souring relations?

Boris Berezovsky. The former Kremlin power-broker turned on Putin and left Russia in 2000; a decade after the asylum ruling he was found dead at his Berkshire home, and the coroner recorded an open verdict.

After the 2004 Beslan school siege, Putin ended direct elections for which regional officials?

Governors. Putin argued that tighter central control was part of the fight against terrorism, so regional leaders would be nominated by the president instead of elected.

Putin's 2007 speech attacking American dominance of world affairs is known by the name of which city?

Munich. He told the security conference there that Washington had 'overstepped its national borders in every way', and warned that US missile-defence plans for Europe meant a new arms race.

Putin led the successful bid to bring the 2014 Winter Olympics to which city?

Sochi. Putin flew to Guatemala City to address the IOC in person before the vote, and Russia went on to spend more on the Games than any Olympic host before it.

Russia annexed which territory in March 2014, weeks after the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv?

Crimea. Putin later revealed he gave the order at an all-night meeting on the night Kyiv's pro-Moscow president was ousted, telling aides it was time to 'bring Crimea back into Russia'.

Putin ordered a military intervention in 2015 to support which Middle Eastern leader?

Bashar al-Assad. He held on for nine more years; when rebels took Damascus in December 2024 he fled to Moscow, where Russia granted him asylum.

The 2020 amendment wiping Putin's term count clean was proposed in parliament by which cosmonaut?

Valentina Tereshkova. The first woman in space, by then an 83-year-old ruling-party MP, moved that his earlier terms be discounted, which could keep him in the Kremlin until 2036.

In March 2023 which body issued an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged child abductions?

The International Criminal Court. Its member states may be obliged to arrest him, so he skipped the 2023 BRICS summit in South Africa and sent his foreign minister instead.

In September 2022 Putin proclaimed the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and which fourth Ukrainian region?

Zaporizhzhia. Its regional capital was still firmly in Ukrainian hands when he signed, and the UN General Assembly went on to reject all four annexations by 143 votes to 5.

Time's 2007 Person of the Year essay said Putin stood above all for what?

Stability. The editors stressed the title is not an honour: they called him no democrat, but the man who steadied a country on the verge of becoming a failed state.

Which magazine ranked Putin the world's most powerful person four years running from 2013?

Forbes. He knocked Barack Obama off the top spot in 2013 and held it until Xi Jinping overtook him in 2018, the last time the list appeared.

Which opposition leader died in an Arctic prison weeks before Putin's 2024 re-election?

Alexei Navalny. He had survived a Novichok poisoning in 2020, then flew home to Russia and was arrested on arrival; he died in custody in February 2024, aged 47.

Putin granted asylum in 2013 to which fugitive leaker, stranded for a month in a Moscow airport?

Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor's US passport was cancelled while he was in transit; he has stayed in Russia ever since, and in 2022 Putin made him a Russian citizen.

Putin and Lyudmila announced their divorce on state TV after attending what?

Ballet. After 30 years of marriage, Lyudmila called it a 'civilised divorce' and said her husband was completely taken up with his work.

In 2007 Putin's black Labrador wandered into his talks with which visiting leader, who is reported to fear dogs?

Angela Merkel. She had been bitten by a dog in 1995 and sat stiffly as the Labrador sniffed around her; Putin later said he never meant to scare her and had apologised.

Which two martial arts did Putin compete in as a young man?

Judo and sambo. A small boy who kept getting into fights with bigger local lads, he turned to martial arts to hold his own, deciding that 'street smarts were not enough'.

In 2012 Putin piloted a motorised hang-glider to lead which endangered birds along their migration route?

Siberian cranes. The birds had been bred in captivity and had to be shown the way, so Putin flew ahead of them over the Yamal Peninsula as the flock's leader.

In 2011 Putin surfaced from a Black Sea dive holding two ancient what, a find his spokesman later admitted was staged?

Greek amphorae. He emerged in a wetsuit with the jars, and two months later his spokesman conceded that archaeologists had found them earlier and left them on the seabed for him.

Putin marked his 63rd birthday in 2015 by scoring seven goals in a televised game of which sport?

Ice hockey. He played for a team of veteran stars that won 15-10, and told the crowd that those who strive for victory will certainly achieve it.

Putin links his religious awakening to what 1996 event?

A fire that destroyed the family dacha. He rebuilt it to the same design, and seven friends then built alongside him, forming the gated lakeside community that became his inner circle.

What is the Black Sea mansion exposed in a 2021 anti-corruption video investigation popularly called?

Putin's Palace. The Kremlin denied he owned it, and eleven days after the film appeared his childhood friend, the billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, announced that the estate was his.

A 2007 Russian tabloid spread headlined 'Be Like Putin' showed readers how to get his what?

Muscular torso. Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a huge photo of the president bare-chested on holiday in the Siberian mountains, with a guide to the exercises needed to match him.

Putin's official country residence, a walled estate just west of Moscow, is called what?

Novo-Ogaryovo. He had the state dacha renovated in 2000, and in 2012 said he would work from it more often rather than add to Moscow's notorious traffic.

Which American broadcaster landed the only interview Putin gave a Western journalist in the two years after the 2022 invasion?

Tucker Carlson. At the start of the February 2024 interview Putin promised to take 'only 30 seconds or one minute' on the background, then began a history lecture in the year 862.

In 2008 Putin reportedly told George W. Bush that which country 'is not even a state'?

Ukraine. He returned to the theme in a long essay published in July 2021, arguing that Russians and Ukrainians are 'one people'; the full-scale invasion came seven months later.

Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats in 2018 after ex-spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned in which English city?

Salisbury. Two suspects later told Russian state TV they were only tourists who had come to see the cathedral, 'famous for its 123-metre spire'.

Which French film star did Putin make a Russian citizen in 2013 after he quit France in a row over taxes?

Gérard Depardieu. He had vowed to hand back his French passport over a planned 75 per cent top tax rate; Putin offered him citizenship and signed the order two weeks later.

Which gas pipeline, opened in 2019, has Putin called the world's biggest construction project?

Power of Siberia. Putin and Xi Jinping opened the line to China by video link in December 2019, under a 30-year supply deal valued at about $400bn.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft says Putin walked off with what after a 2005 meeting?

A Super Bowl ring. Kraft recalled Putin slipping it on and saying 'I can kill someone with this ring' before pocketing it; the Kremlin insists the 124-diamond ring was a gift.

Which Georgian president was Putin's adversary in the brief Russia–Georgia war of August 2008?

Mikheil Saakashvili. Russian forces routed his army within days; he later resurfaced as governor of Odesa, and was arrested when he slipped back into Georgia in 2021.