russian president vladimir putin family Moscow Kremlin the KGB

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born October 7, 1952, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
He is a Russian politician who was the 2nd President of the Russian Federation from 2000 to 2008 and is the current Prime Minister of Russia as well as the chairman of United Russia. He became acting President on December 31, 1999, succeeding Boris Yeltsin, and then won the 2000 presidential election. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term lasting until May 7, 2008.
On July 28, 1983 Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva, at that time an undergraduate student of the Spanish branch of the Philology Department of the Leningrad State University and a former airline stewardess, who had been born in Kaliningrad on January 6, 1958. They have two daughters, Maria Putina was born 1985 and Yekaterina Katya Putina was born 1986 in Dresden. The daughters attended the German School in Moscow until his appointment as prime minister.
Since 1992, Putin has owned a dacha of about seven thousand square meters in Solovyovka, Priozersky district of the Leningrad region, which is located on the eastern shore of the Komsomol'skoye lake on the Karelian Isthmus near Saint Petersburg. His neighbours there are Vladimir Yakunin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Viktor Myachin, Vladimir Smirnov and Nikolay Shamalov. On November 10, 1996, together they instituted the co-operative society Ozero (the Lake) which united their properties. This was confirmed by Putin's income and property declaration as a nominee for the presidency in 2000. However, this real estate was not listed in his income and property declaration for 1998–2002 submitted before the 2004 elections.
Putin answers questions from Time magazine

Putin's father was "a model communist, genuinely believing in its ideals while trying to put them into practice in his own life." With this dedication he became secretary of the Party cell in his workshop and then after taking night classes joined the factory’s Party bureau. Though his father was a "militant atheist", Putin's mother "was a devoted Orthodox believer". Though she kept no icons at home, she attended church regularly (despite the government's persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church at that time). She ensured that Putin was secretly christened as a baby, and she regularly took him to services. His father knew of this but turned a blind eye. According to Putin's own statements, his religious awakening followed the serious car crash of his wife in 1993, and was deepened by a life-threatening fire that burned down their dacha in August 1996. Right before an official visit to Israel his mother gave him his baptismal cross telling him to get it blessed “I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.” Putin repeated the story to George W. Bush in June 2001, which might have inspired Bush to make his much-derided remark that he had "got a sense of Putin's soul". Putin is regularly shown on Russian television attending Orthodox services, lighting candles in front of icons and crossing himself, though there is no credible information about his actual participation in the Church's sacraments. When asked whether he believes in God during his interview with Time, he responded saying: "There are things I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease."
Vladimir Putin: PERSON OF THE YEAR 2007

Putin speaks German with near-native fluency. His family used to speak German at home as well. After becoming President he was reported to be taking English lessons and could be seen conversing directly with Bush and other native speakers of English in informal situations, but he continues to use interpreters for formal talks. Putin spoke English in public for the first time during the state dinner in Buckingham Palace in 2003 saying but a few phrases while delivering his condolences to the Queen. He made a full English speech while addressing delegates at the 119th International Olympic Committee Session in Guatemala City on behalf of the successful bid of Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Vladimir putin half naked

During his Presidential terms, and coming into his second term as Prime Minister, Putin has enjoyed high approval ratings amongst the Russian public for rescuing Russia from the chaos of Boris Yeltsin years. During his eight years in office, the economy bounced back from crisis seeing GDP increase six-fold (72% in PPP), poverty more than halve and average monthly salaries increase from $80 to $640, or by 150% in real rates. At the same time, his conduct in office has been questioned by domestic dissenters, as well as foreign governments and human rights organizations, for his handling of internal conflicts in Chechnya and Dagestan, his record on internal human rights and freedoms, his relations with former Soviet Republics, and his relations with the so-called oligarchs: Russian businessmen with a high degree of power and influence within both the Russian Government and economy.
This was seen by the Kremlin as a series of anti-Russian propaganda attacks orchestrated by western opponents and exiled oligarchs. While several Yeltsin era oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky were either exiled or put in jail, the vast majority of them such as Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Vekselberg, Leonid Fedun, Vladimir Potanin, Roman Abramovich,Alexander Abramov, Mikhail Prokhorov, maximized and consolidated their control over russian natural resources and cash flows.
Due to constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive Presidential term. Following the success of his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in the 2008 presidential elections, he was then nominated by the latter to be Russia's Prime Minister and took the post on May 8, 2008.
Bio info (c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vladimirovich_Putin