Analysts discuss the 20-year rule of Vladimir Putin
When Russian President Boris Yeltsin suddenly resigned on Dec. 31, 1999, hand-picking a former KGB official just a few years into politics as his successor, few anticipated that Vladimir Putin would still grip the reins of power 20 years later, a Kremlin tenure exceeded in the modern era only by Josef Stalin, the late Soviet dictator. In 2018, Putin won a fourth six-year term as president of the Russian Federation, and with the election of a very supportive U.S. president, Donald Trump, observers say Putin’s power and stature on the world stage may have reached new heights. To assess Putin’s successes, failures, and fears now and over the past two decades the Gazette spoke with three Russia analysts. Paul Kolbe, director of the Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School, spent 25 years in the CIA in senior leadership roles. He was stationed in Russia as Putin...