Putin celebrates 25 years at the head of Russia, but has he ‘taken care of’ the country? asks Steve Rosenberg

I will never forget New Year’s Eve 1999.

He worked as a producer in the BBC’s Moscow office. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russian President Boris Yeltsin had resigned.

His decision to resign took everyone by surprise, including the British press in Moscow. When the news broke there was no correspondent in the office. That meant I had to step in to write and broadcast my first BBC dispatch.

“Boris Yeltsin always said he would finish his term,” I wrote. “Today he told the Russians that he had changed his mind.”

It was the beginning of my career as a reporter.

And the beginning of Vladimir Putin as leader of Russia.

Following Yeltsin’s resignation, in accordance with the Russian Constitution, Prime Minister Putin became acting president. Three months later he won the elections.

Upon leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s parting instruction to Putin was: “Take care of Russia!”

I have found myself remembering these words of Yeltsin more and more, the closer Russia’s war against Ukraine approaches the three-year mark.

This is because President Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine has had devastating consequences.

Mainly for Ukraine, which has suffered massive destruction and casualties in its cities. Almost 20% of its territory has been occupied and 10 million of its citizens have been displaced.

But also for Russia:

I have been reporting on Putin since he came to power a quarter of a century ago.

On December 31, 1999, who would have thought that Russia’s new leader would still be in power two and a half decades later? Or that Russia today would be waging a war against Ukraine and confronting the West?

I often wonder if the course of history would have been drastically different if Yeltsin had chosen someone else to succeed him. The question, of course, is academic. History is full of buts and maybes.

One thing I can say for sure: for twenty-five years I have seen different Putins.

And I’m not the only one.

“The Putin with whom I met, with whom I did good business and with whom I established a NATO-Russia Council is very, very different from this almost megalomaniac of the present moment,” former NATO chief Lord Robertson told me. in 2023.

“The man who stood next to me in May 2002, right next to me, and said that Ukraine is a sovereign, independent nation state that will make its own decisions about security, is now the man who says that (Ukraine) is not a Nation state.

“I think Vladimir Putin has very thin skin and enormous ambition for his country. The Soviet Union was recognized as the second superpower in the world. Russia cannot make any claim in that direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”

That’s one possible explanation for the change we’ve seen in Putin: his burning ambition to “make Russia great again” (and to make up for what many perceive as Moscow’s defeat in the Cold War) set Russia on a course of inevitable collision with Russia. its neighbors… and with the West.

The Kremlin has a different explanation.

From the speeches he gives and the comments he makes, Putin seems driven by resentment, by a widespread feeling that Russia has been lied to and disrespected for years and that the West has dismissed its security concerns.

But does Putin himself believe that he has fulfilled Yeltsin’s request to “take care of Russia”?

I recently had the opportunity to discover it.

More than four hours into his long year-end press conference, Putin invited me to ask a question.

“Boris Yeltsin told him to deal with Russia,” I reminded the president. “But what about the significant losses in your so-called ‘special military operation’, the Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region, the sanctions, the high inflation? Do you think you have taken care of your country?”

“Yes,” President Putin responded. “And I haven’t just taken care of that. We’ve moved back from the brink.”

He portrayed Yeltsin’s Russia as a country that had been losing its sovereignty. He accused the West of having “condescendingly patted” Yeltsin on the shoulder while “using Russia for its own purposes.” But he, Putin, was “doing everything possible,” he said, “to ensure that Russia was an independent sovereign state.”

Presenting yourself as a defender of Russian sovereignty: is this a view you have retrospectively adopted to try to justify the war in Ukraine? Or does Putin really believe this interpretation of modern Russian history?

I’m still not sure. Not yet. But I feel like it’s a key question.

The answer to this question may well influence how the war will end and Russia’s future direction.