Vladimir Putin Trivia
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49 free Vladimir Putin trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Vladimir Putin's grandfather cooked for Lenin and Stalin. Putin himself spent 16 years in the KGB, mostly reading press clippings in Dresden, then rode the coat-tails of his old law professor into Saint Petersburg politics and, in 1999, into Boris Yeltsin's inner circle. Less than a year later he was president. A quarter of a century on, he has ruled Russia longer than anyone since Stalin, as president, prime minister and president again. This Vladimir Putin trivia quiz runs 49 questions across his life and career: the Siege of Leningrad and his family, School No. 193 and German immersion, law at Leningrad State University, the KGB and the Stasi, Anatoly Sobchak, the FSB, the 1999 succession, Medvedev's tandem, oligarchs from Berezovsky to Abramovich, the Munich Speech, Sochi and the World Cup, Crimea, the 2020 constitutional changes, the ICC warrant, judo and sambo, dogs and residences, Time and Forbes rankings, and the elections of 2018 and 2024. Easy questions come first; the last third is for people who know their Ozero cooperative from their Bank Rossiya. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's biography of Putin, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question. Fans of this quiz should also try our Russian history and world leaders quizzes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Putin told parliament in 2005 that the collapse of which state was a geopolitical catastrophe?
The Soviet Union
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.
Q 02In June 2023 Putin faced a brief armed mutiny led by the boss of which mercenary force?
The Wagner Group
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.
Q 03Putin's grandfather Spiridon worked as a personal cook to which two Soviet leaders?
Lenin and Stalin
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.
Q 04Putin's brother Viktor died in 1942 during which wartime event?
The Siege of Leningrad
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.
Q 05In 2001 Putin delivered most of a speech to a foreign parliament in which language?
German
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.
Q 06Putin's 1975 university degree was in which subject?
Law
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.
Q 07Which American film director sat down with Putin for a series of television interviews broadcast in 2017?
Oliver Stone
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.
Q 08Researchers found that Putin's economics dissertation lifted pages from a management textbook first published in which country?
The United States
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.
Q 09From 1985 to 1990 Putin was posted for the KGB to which city in the GDR?
Dresden
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.'
Q 10Putin was a KGB officer in the GDR, yet an ID card found in an archive there in 2018 came from whom?
The Stasi
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.
Q 11By his own account, what did Putin do with his office's KGB files as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989?
Burned them
Burned them. 'I personally burned a huge amount of material,' he recalled, adding: 'We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst.'
Q 12Putin says he resigned from the KGB on the second day of which crisis?
The 1991 coup against Gorbachev
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.'
Q 13Putin's first political job in 1990 was as an adviser on international affairs to whom?
Q 21After the 2004 Beslan school siege, Putin ended direct elections for which regional officials?
Governors
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.
Q 22Putin's 2007 speech attacking American dominance of world affairs is known by the name of which city?
Munich
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.
Q 23Putin led the successful bid to bring the 2014 Winter Olympics to which city?
Sochi
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.
Mayor Anatoly Sobchak
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.
Q 14Putin's first decree as acting president granted immunity from prosecution to whom?
Boris Yeltsin
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.
Q 15As prime minister in 1999, Putin sent troops to crush separatist rebels in which Russian republic?
Chechnya
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.
Q 16Putin first became acting president when his predecessor resigned without warning on which day?
New Year's Eve
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.
Q 17Putin won his first presidential election in 2000 by beating which party's candidate into second place?
The Communist Party
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.
Q 18Barred from a third straight term, Putin was prime minister from 2008 to 2012 under which president?
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev. He named Putin prime minister within hours of his own inauguration, and in 2011 the two announced they would simply swap jobs.
Q 19Russia's economy grew about 7% a year in Putin's first two terms, buoyed by soaring prices for what?
Oil
Oil. Along with gas, the windfall let Russia pay off its Soviet-era debts to foreign governments, and to do it ahead of schedule.
Q 20Which oligarch, once Putin's patron, was granted asylum by the UK in 2003, souring relations?
Boris Berezovsky
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.
Q 24Russia annexed which territory in March 2014, weeks after the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv?
Crimea
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'.
Q 25Putin ordered a military intervention in 2015 to support which Middle Eastern leader?
Bashar al-Assad
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.
Q 26The 2020 amendment wiping Putin's term count clean was proposed in parliament by which cosmonaut?
Valentina Tereshkova
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.
Q 27In March 2023 which body issued an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged child abductions?
The International Criminal Court
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.
Q 28In September 2022 Putin proclaimed the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and which fourth Ukrainian region?
Zaporizhzhia
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.
Q 29Time's 2007 Person of the Year essay said Putin stood above all for what?
Stability
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.
Q 30Which magazine ranked Putin the world's most powerful person four years running from 2013?
Forbes
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.