Putin reaches 25 years in charge of Russia, but has he ‘taken care’ of country, asks Steve Rosenberg

I will never forget New Year’s Eve 1999.

I was working as a producer in the BBC office in Moscow. Suddenly there was exciting news: Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned.

His decision to resign surprised everyone, including the British press in Moscow. When the news broke, there was no reporter in the office. This meant I had to log in to write and broadcast my first BBC submission.

“Boris Yeltsin always said he would see out the rest of his life,” I wrote. “Today he told the Russian people that he has changed his mind.”

This was the beginning of my journalism career.

And the beginning of Vladimir Putin as the leader of Russia.

After the resignation of Yeltsin, according to the constitution of Russia, President Putin became the president. Three months later he won the election.

Leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin advised Putin: “Take care of Russia!”

I have been remembering these words of Yeltsin more and more, Russia’s war in Ukraine is approaching three years.

That’s because President Putin’s all-out attack on Ukraine has had devastating consequences.

Especially in Ukraine, which has seen great destruction and casualties in its cities. About 20% of its territory has been confiscated and 10 million of its citizens have been displaced.

But in Russia, too:

I have been talking about Putin since he came to power a century ago.

On December 31, 1999, who would have thought that the new Russian leader would still be in power twenty and a half years later? Or that Russia today is fighting in Ukraine and confronting the West?

I often wonder if history would have been very different if Yeltsin had chosen someone else to replace him. The question, of course, is academic. This history is full of ifs and buts and maybes.

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

And I’m not the only one.

“The Putin I met, he did good business with, he established the Nato-Russia Council with him, he is very different from the almost megalomaniac here,” former Nato chief Lord Robertson told me in 2023.

“The man who stood next to me in May 2002, next to me, said that Ukraine is an independent and independent country that can make its own decisions about security, that’s the man who is saying that. [Ukraine] it is not a secular country.

“I think Vladimir Putin is very thin-skinned and has a lot of passion for his country. The Soviet Union was recognized as the second most powerful country in the world. His history.”

That’s one possible reason for the change we’ve seen from Putin: his burning desire to “Make Russia Great Again” (and to reverse what many see as Moscow’s defeat in the Cold War) is putting Russia on an inevitable collision course. neighbors – and the West.

The Kremlin has a different explanation.

From the speeches he gives, the comments he gives, Putin seems to be driven by anger, and the overwhelming feeling that for years Russia has been lied to and ridiculed, its security concerns dismissed by the West.

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

I recently had the opportunity to find out.

More than four hours into his long year-end meeting, Putin asked me to ask a question.

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

“Yes,” President Putin replied. “And I didn’t just care. We’re off the edge.”

He portrayed Yeltsin’s Russia as a country that has been losing its sovereignty. He accused the West of “patting” Yeltsin on the shoulder while “using Russia for his own purposes”. But he, Putin, is “doing everything”, he said, “to ensure that Russia is an independent country”.

Presenting himself as a defender of Russian sovereignty: is this the idea he brought back to try to justify the war in Ukraine? Or does Putin really believe this to take the modern history of Russia?

I still don’t know. Not now. But I think it’s a very important question.

The answer to that could affect how the war ends – and Russia’s future.