Russian President Vladimir Putin was appointed acting prime minister on Aug. 9 1...
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin was appointed acting prime minister on Aug. 9 1999 by then president Boris Yeltsin. He has been in office as president or prime minister ever since, a period spanning two decades.Aug. 9, 1999 - During an economic crisis, Boris Yeltsin names little-known security chief Vladimir Putin as his fifth acting prime minister in less than a year, and says he wants Putin to succeed him as president.
2003 - Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is arrested and charged with fraud. He is later found guilty and jailed in a case his supporters said was punishment for his meddling in politics. He is only released in 2013 after Putin pardons him. December 2004 - Putin scraps direct elections for regional governors making them, in effect, Kremlin appointees. Putin says the move is needed to keep Russia together.
2006 - Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of rights abuses in Chechnya, is murdered in Moscow on Putin’s birthday. Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko dies in London that same year after being poisoned with a radioactive substance. A British inquiry years later concludes he was killed by Russian spies.
August 2008 - Russia fights and wins a short war with Georgia which loses control over two breakaway regions that are garrisoned with Russian troops. Sept. 30, 2015 - Russia launches air strikes in Syria in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, turning the tide of the conflict in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor.
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