Everything Mikhail Gorbachev achieved, Vladimir Putin set out to dismantle
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Less than a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev’s democratic reforms led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin rose to power in Russia. He would make it his life’s work to dismantle the political freedoms that Gorbachev had encouraged.
At the time, Putin was widely seen as a democrat and western leaders flew to Moscow to shake his hand. He vowed to “preserve and develop democracy” as well as respect freedom of speech and independent media.
Yet the omens were there for anyone who cared to look.
Vladimir Putin chairing a security council meeting in the Kremlin in 1999. Shortly after, the ailing President Yeltsin named him as his successor
AP/GETTY IMAGES
In December 1999, Putin addressed a gathering of security service officials at the headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, in Moscow. An ex-FSB chief, Putin had been prime minister