Vladimir Putin: The New Tsar

He is the former KGB spy who emerged from the shadows to lead a nuclear superpower. In less than a year, Vladimir Putin rose from an obscure bureaucrat to the hand-picked successor of Boris Yeltsin and the President of Russia. This episode of Biography investigates the man behind the steely gaze, tracing his journey from the communal apartments of Leningrad and his years in East German intelligence to the inner sanctum of the Kremlin. We examine his early promises of order and reform, and ask: Is he the savior of a crumbling nation, or a return to the autocratic rule of the past?

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