The New Tsar (99 page)
Authors: Steven Lee Myers
In 2003, the Kremlin launched a prosecutorial assault against Yukos Oil Company and its chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the oligarchs who had amassed fortunes in the 1990s. Khodorkovsky was charged with tax evasion, fraud, and embezzlement and convicted in 2005 after a trial that was widely denounced as politically motivated. He was tried and convicted in a second trial in 2010 but then amnestied by Putin at the end of 2013, before the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Putin focused relentlessly on Russia’s natural resources as the means of restoring the country’s prosperity and prestige. He installed his close allies, most of them from his years in Petersburg, as chiefs of the most important assets. He shakes hands here with Aleksei Miller, an aide from Sobchak’s administration, who became chairman of the state natural gas giant Gazprom. Between them is Igor Sechin, one of Putin’s closest aides, who became chairman of the state oil company, Rosneft. Sechin was widely seen as a driving force behind the assault on Yukos.
Putin often disavowed manifestations of a cult of personality, but the Kremlin carefully crafted his image as a Russian Everyman, engaged in various sports or other activities, often outdoors. This photograph was taken by the Kremlin’s official photographer during Putin’s vacation in Siberia in the summer of 2007. In 2013, Putin’s longtime spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, insisted Putin never intentionally posed shirtless.
After months of uncertainty and political paralysis before the end of Putin’s second presidential term, Putin anointed his aide, Dmitri Medvedev, as the next president in December 2007. Medvedev, who, like Putin, had never run for office before, in turn appointed Putin as his prime minister. From that post Putin remained the country’s paramount leader from 2008 to 2012. In this photograph, Medvedev addressed the nominating convention of the United Russia party at the end of 2007 as Putin listened from the dais.
During Putin’s rule, some of his closest friends from Petersburg emerged from the margins of regional business to become the most powerful—and richest—men in Russia. They included Yuri Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko, and an old judo sparring partner, Arkady Rotenberg, shown here with Putin at the funeral of their coach from the 1960s, Anatoly Rakhlin.
Aleksei Navalny, a lawyer turned blogger, became famous for his online campaigns against corruption and cronyism in Putin’s Russia. In 2011 and 2012, he emerged as a leader of large protests against the parliamentary and presidential elections—and promptly faced criminal prosecution on a variety of charges that were seen as attemtps to silence him. The sticker on his computer with Putin’s face says “Thief.”
In 2013, Putin and his wife emerged from a ballet at the Kremlin and announced that they would divorce after nearly thirty years of marriage. By Putin’s second term as president, Lyudmila had largely retreated from public view.
Rumors swirled around Putin’s relationship with Alina Kabayeva, an Olympic rhythmic gymnast who became a member of the State Duma. She is shown here in 2005 receiving a state medal. Although the depth of their relationship remained unclear for years, she was close to Putin’s inner circle of friends, ultimately working for the media conglomerate controlled by Yuri Kovalchuk.
After the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Putin’s popularity soared to new heights at home, even as he was isolated abroad for having upset the prevailing order that had largely kept peace in Europe after the Cold War. Flags with his image dominated a rally in March 2014 in Red Square, the theme of which was “We are together!”
