Vladimir poutine

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to cease fighting in Ukraine for 36 hours starting Friday at noon, Moscow time, but Kyiv quickly dismissed the move as a ploy, unlikely to slow a conflict that’s heading for its second year.

Twenty years ago the Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. Few could have predicted that two decades later Putin would still be ruling Russia

Vladimir Putin