Putin reaches 25 years as Russia’s chief, however has he ‘taken care of’ the nation, asks Steve Rosenberg

I’ll always remember New 12 months’s Eve 1999.

I labored as a producer within the Moscow workplace of the BBC. All of the sudden the information broke: Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned.

His choice to resign shocked everybody, together with the British press in Moscow. When the information broke, there was no correspondent within the workplace. This meant I needed to step in to jot down and broadcast my first dispatch on the BBC.

“Boris Yeltsin all the time mentioned he would full his time period,” I wrote. “Right this moment he advised the Russians he had modified his thoughts.”

It was the beginning of my profession as a journalist.

And the start of Vladimir Putin’s arrival on the head of Russia.

After Yeltsin resigned, in accordance with the Russian structure, Prime Minister Putin grew to become interim president. Three months later, he gained the elections.

Leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s parting directive to Putin was: “Handle Russia!”

I bear in mind these phrases of Yeltsin increasingly more as Russia’s warfare in opposition to Ukraine approaches the three-year mark.

Certainly, President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has had devastating penalties.

Primarily for Ukraine, which skilled large destruction and losses in its cities. Almost 20% of its territory has been occupied and 10 million of its residents have been displaced.

However for Russia too:

I have been reporting on Putin since he got here to energy 1 / 4 of a century in the past.

On December 31, 1999, who would have thought that the brand new Russian chief would nonetheless be in energy two and a half a long time later? Or that Russia would as we speak wage warfare in opposition to Ukraine and confront the West?

I typically marvel if the course of historical past would have been radically totally different if Yeltsin had chosen another person to succeed him. The query is clearly tutorial. The story is filled with ifs, buts and maybes.

One factor I can say with certainty: in twenty-five years, I’ve seen totally different Putins.

And I am not the one one.

“The Putin that I met, with whom I did good enterprise, who established a NATO-Russia Council, may be very, very totally different from this virtually megalomaniac of the second,” the previous head of NATO, Lord Robertson, in 2023.

“The person who stood with me in Could 2002, proper subsequent to me, and mentioned that Ukraine was a sovereign, unbiased nation-state that may make its personal safety selections, is now the person who says that [Ukraine] will not be a nation-state.

“I believe Vladimir Putin has very skinny pores and skin and nice ambition for his nation. The Soviet Union was acknowledged because the second superpower on the planet. Russia can’t make any pretensions in that sense. And I believe that has ate away at his power.

That is one potential clarification for the change we have now seen in Putin: his burning ambition to “make Russia nice once more” (and to compensate for what many understand as Moscow’s defeat within the Chilly Conflict) has put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbors – and with the West.

The Kremlin has a special clarification.

From his speeches and feedback, Putin seems to be pushed by resentment, by a normal feeling that for years Russia has been lied to and disrespected, and that his issues safety points have been rejected by the West.

However does Putin himself consider he has responded to Yeltsin’s request to “deal with Russia”?

I not too long ago had the chance to find it.

Greater than 4 hours into his lengthy end-of-year press convention, Putin invited me to ask a query.

“Boris Yeltsin advised you to deal with Russia,” I reminded the president. “However what concerning the vital losses out of your so-called ‘particular navy operation’, Ukrainian troops within the Kursk area, sanctions, excessive inflation. Do you assume you could have taken care of your nation? “

“Sure,” replied President Putin. “And I did not simply take care of it. We pulled ourselves again from the brink.”

He described Yeltsin’s Russia as a rustic shedding sovereignty. He accused the West of “condescendingly tapping” Yeltsin on the shoulder whereas “utilizing Russia for its personal ends.” However he, Putin, was “doing every part in his energy,” he mentioned, “to make sure that Russia is a sovereign and unbiased state.”

Presenting himself because the defender of Russian sovereignty: is that this a imaginative and prescient that he places ahead retrospectively to attempt to justify the warfare in Ukraine? Or does Putin actually consider on this view of recent Russian historical past?

I am nonetheless undecided. Not but. However I really feel it is a key query.

The reply to this query may nicely affect how the warfare ends – and Russia’s future route.