RUSSIA - Profile - Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Elected President in March 2000, Putin has managed to transform the Russian scenario from one of economic uncertainty and political instability to one where the public has a great deal more confidence in the future of the country. He has achieved this through a combination of a tough approach on law and order issues and flexibility on the economic front. Through a complex web combining reformist technocrats and agents of the secret service, President Putin controls the decision makers for all the sectors. He has curbed the powers of Russia's 89 governors and local governments, having divided the federation into seven super-regions with each led by a presidential representative.

Putin has introduced order and bolstered property rights, crucial for foreign investors long frustrated with the previous regime of President Boris Yeltsin. The direct beneficiaries are the oligarchs - excluding a few too ambitious politically for Putin's liking and now in exile - who carved up the Soviet petroleum industry and, in the process, each other and foreign partners. Putin gave them the incentives to develop their businesses. With higher oil prices since April 1999 and better corporate governance and treatment of minority shareholders, Russia's oil barons have found they can make more money by investing in their firms and pumping oil than they did by stripping the assets and salting them away in tax havens. The most far-reaching fiscal reforms in 10 years, effective on Jan. 1, 2001, put Russians among the world's least taxed people. Putin in 2002 signed a law protecting firms from spurious bankruptcy proceedings.

Putin's successful leadership of the country has resulted in a growing personality cult, with portraits and brass busts proliferating. There is a youth movement created in his honour, a bar named after him and "A Man Like Putin" teen pop song, the journalist Oleg Blotsky has recently come up with Volume 2 of his biography, The Road to Power, which covers Putin's KGB years and beyond, including those in East Germany. Volume 3 is due out in Nov. 2003 in the run-up to parliamentary elections and a probable run for a second term by Putin a few months later. Despite his clear courting with authoritarianism, by Aug. 12, 2000 Putin had become "the most popular ruler in Russia's history", as one of his aides put it. His background as KGB spy has only added to his credibility.

The second elected president in Russia's history, Putin won 52.5% of the popular vote on March 26, 2000. Putin, who a few years prior to that would not even have been considered a presidential possibility, was invested with tremendous powers by the Russian constitution. Based on the constitution, adopted in a Dec. 1993 referendum stage-managed to suit Yelstin, the president is immune from prosecution. The president can name and dismiss the prime minister, though the nominee is subject to Duma's approval. If the Duma refuses the president's choice three times, the ruler has the power to dissolve it. The president calls parliamentary elections, issues "executive orders" with the force of law, and effectively rules by decree. The president can form and head the Security Council, the body which approves military action, and declare a state of emergency. In the event of "aggression against the Russian Federation or an immediate threat thereof", the president can impose martial law in Russia or part of Russia. The president can appoint and dismiss the Supreme Command of the armed forces, nominate judges to the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, and appoint or dismiss the chairman of the Central Bank

Putin was born to Communist parents on Oct. 7, 1952 in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad. He graduated with a doctorate in law in 1975 and then joined the secret service KGB. For nine years he worked for the internal affairs department in KGB's Leningrad branch. From 1984 to 1990, he was a KGB officer in Dresden, East Germany. In late 1990 he entered the domestic political arena as an aide to and a protege of St. Petersburg's liberal mayor Anatoly Sobchak. In 1994 he became the first deputy head of the St. Petersburg government, under Sobchak. In 1996, Putin moved to Moscow and ended up being in charge of the Kremlin's relations with Russia's 89 regions. In that position he gained a reputation as a tough "imperialist" who resisted giving more powers to the independent-minded governors and other regional leaders. It was then that Putin decided the regional governors had too much power at the expense of Moscow. He told a colleague that de-centralisation meant "one step before the...collapse of Russia".

In July 1998 then President Yeltsin, impressed with the tenacity of the "young KGB graduate", made Putin head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) - successor body to the Soviet-era KGB. In March 1999 Putin also became secretary to Yeltsin's advisory Security Council. In Aug. 1999 Yeltsin made Putin prime minister - having sacked Sergei Stepashin from that post with typical abruptness - and said Putin was his preferred successor (see his detailed profile in APS Review, Vol. 59, No. 14).

Mikhail Kasyanov: Made prime minister after Putin was elected president in May 2000, Kasyanov had already assumed this job but as first deputy prime minister. He became finance minister when Putin formed the government in August 1999 and stayed in that post until May 2000 when Alexei Kudrin took up this post.

Aged 44, Kasyanov was approved as prime minister by a vote of 325 to 55 in the Duma on May 17, 2000. He told the Duma he would press ahead with "energetic, consistent and balanced" reforms, although he did not spell out any detailed policy initiatives. He laid special emphasis on the need for land reform and improving the living standards of the population.

Kasyanov has been compelled to go slow on ending the monopolies of the gas company Gazprom, the power utility UES and the railways ministry. He has stated that this is an issue which has impeded the establishment of economic competition and hindered economic development. "This is a sensitive problem", he has added, and the government has been careful not to take hasty action. The process, he says, must be gradual. Gazprom's monopoly is being broken, with Florida-registered company Itera already operating in Russia both as a gas marketer and producer.

Kasyanov is one of the liberal reformers. He is well known in foreign financial circles. As finance minister, in 2000 he persuaded the London Club of commercial creditors to write down 35% of Russia's $40 bn Soviet-era debt. The development made him popular. While observers have said Kasyanov might be replaced at some point, he has managed to stay on so far. Critics, however, continue to question his record in dealing with some of Russia's biggest oil companies, like LUKoil, and the largest carmaker Avtovaz. In a series of deals at the end of 1999, they were allowed to repay millions of dollars in commercial debts to the government on a seemingly highly advantageous basis for the companies.