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

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

One thing I can say with certainty: over twenty-five years I’ve seen different Putins.

And I’m not the only one.

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

“The man who stood beside me in May 2002, right beside me, and said Ukraine is a sovereign and independent nation state which will make its own decisions about security, is now the man who says that [Ukraine] is not a nation state.

“I think that Vladimir Putin has a very thin skin and a huge ambition for his country. The Soviet Union was recognised as the second superpower in the world. Russia can’t make any claims in that direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”

That is 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) put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbours – and with the West.

The Kremlin has a different explanation.

From the speeches he gives, the comments he makes, Putin appears driven by resentment, by an all-encompassing feeling that for years Russia has been lied to and disrespected, 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 a chance to find out.