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25 years of Putin: First a friend and now an enemy

2024-08-09 09:17:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

25 years of Putin: First a friend and now an enemy

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/ZUMAPRESS.com/picture alliance

In August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. At the end of 1999/2000 he succeeded the ailing president Boris Yeltsin in this post. As soon as he took office, Putin declared that Russia was and will remain a great power. In Europe he was seen more as a reformer, who was supposed to reorganize the chaotic Russia of the 1990s.

Putin and Yeltsin in 1999. Photo: ITAR-TASS/dpa/picture alliance

In June 2001, US President George W. Bush called Putin "reliable and straightforward" after their high-level meeting. Bush, the head of state that is also the leading power of NATO, said that this was how he valued his soul.

In September 2001, Vladimir Putin offered Europe a security partnership with Russia during a speech to the Bundestag. He questioned the role of the leading Western power, the US. But the Kremlin chief did not rule out Russia's future membership in NATO and the EU.

The EU and Russia agree on various funding programs and cooperation. A "strategic partnership" was required. NATO opened an office in Moscow. Russia set up a representative office in NATO in Brussels. A special NATO-Russia Council discussed strategic issues but also the future voluntary admission of Central and Eastern European states to the alliance.

Vladimir Putin in 1999. Photo: dpa/picture-alliance

As one of the EU's main suppliers of oil and gas, Russia did good business with Europe. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called Putin a "flawless democrat", despite Russia's well-known suppression of the opposition and lack of press freedom. After his term in office, Schröder took lucrative positions in Russian state-owned energy companies.

The return of Putin

In 2006 at the security conference in Munich, Vladimir Putin initiated a change. He complained that the West is not accepting Russia as a great power. He described NATO expansion as a breach of his word. Promises by NATO states not to move towards Russia's border are being ignored, he said. In 1997, however, Russia agreed to enlargement in an agreement with NATO.

Disarmament agreements were called into question. Russia strongly criticized the planned US missile defense. Vladimir Putin was furious when Ukraine and Georgia were promised to join the Western alliance at the NATO summit in April 2008.

Putin visited Aying in 2006 during the Munich Security Conference. Photo: Frank Mächler/dpa/picture-alliance

In August 2008, Putin demonstrated his military might to Europeans. He intervened in a conflict in Georgia and brought parts of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under Russian control after a short war.

In 2013, the EU Commission was still talking about creating a shared "economic and human space" from Lisbon to Vladivostok with Putin's Russia - as a long-term vision.

Putin's wars

But after the expulsion of Russia's friendly president from Ukraine in the spring of 2014 and the Maidan democratic revolution, Russian President Putin openly attacked Ukraine for the first time. He annexed the Crimean Peninsula in violation of international law and brought parts of eastern Ukraine under his control with pro-Russian separatists. The West reacted with the first sanctions and tried to mediate. Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande brokered the Minsk agreement, which was intended to lead to peace. That never happened, but it "served to give Ukraine time to become stronger," as Chancellor Merkel later said.

Relations deteriorated rapidly, but Russian energy imports to Germany and other countries continued. In European perception, Putin was increasingly turning into an autocratic ruler. In 2021, the EU spoke of a "downward spiral" in mutual relations.

Putin as warlord. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik/Pool via REUTERS

In March 2022, shortly after the large-scale attack on Ukraine by Russian troops, US President Joe Biden described Putin as a ruthless "dictator, a war criminal, a murderer". From then on, NATO views Putin's Russia as "the greatest threat to peace in Europe," the new old enemy in the East. The EU is imposing comprehensive sanctions on Russia and trying to cut off oil and gas supplies as soon as possible. Even two years after the start of the war, this has still not been fully achieved. Russian liquefied gas continues to flow to Europe. Trade with Russia is shrinking, but many European companies still do business in Russia. The food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries are not affected by the sanctions.

25 years after Putin took office, NATO is preparing for a new arms race. Defense against a possible Russian aggression is now the main task of the alliance./ DW