page_title: Vladimir Putin
section_title: Economic, industrial, and energy policies
hierarchical_section_title: Vladimir Putin / Domestic policies / Economic, industrial, and energy policies
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ölpreis von 1861 bis 2011 (1861-1944 WTI, 1945-1983 Arabian Light, 1984-2011 Brent) (jährlicher Durchschnitt in US-Dollar pro Barrel) English: Crude oil prices from 1861 to 2011 (1861-1944 WTI, 1945-1983 Arabian Light, 1984-2011 Brent) (yearly average in US dollars per barrel)
context_page_description: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and a former officer of the KGB who has served as President of Russia since 2012, previously holding the position from 1999 until 2008. He was also the Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.
  Putin was born in Leningrad and studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975. Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He later moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of President Boris Yeltsin. He served as Director of the Federal Security Service and Secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as Prime Minister in August 1999. After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became Acting President, and less than four months later was elected outright to his first term as president and was reelected in 2004.
context_section_description: Fueled by the 2000s commodities boom including record high oil prices, under the Putin administration from 2001 to 2007, the economy made real gains of an average 7% per year, making it the 7th largest economy in the world in purchasing power. In 2007, Russia's GDP exceeded that of Russian SFSR in 1990, having recovered from the 1998 financial crisis and the preceding recession in the 1990s. By 2008, Russia's GDP measured by purchasing power increased by 72%.
  During Putin's first eight years in office, industry grew substantially, as did production, construction, real incomes, credit, and the middle class. Putin has also been praised for eliminating widespread barter and thus boosting the economy. Inflation remained a problem however.
  A fund for oil revenue allowed Russia to repay all of the Soviet Union's debts by 2005. Russia joined the World Trade Organization on 22 August 2012.
  Control over the economy was increased by placing individuals from the intelligence services and the military in key positions of the Russian economy, including on boards of large companies.
  In 2005, an industry consolidation programme was launched to bring the main aircraft producing companies under a single umbrella organization, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). The aim was to optimize production lines and minimise losses. The UAC is one of Russia's "national champions" and comparable to EADS in Europe.
  A program was introduced with the aim of increasing Russia's share of the European energy market by building submerged gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine and other countries which were often seen as non-reliable transit partners by Russia, especially following the Russia-Ukraine gas disputes of the late 2000s. Russia also undermined the rival Nabucco pipeline project by buying gas from Turkmenistan and redirecting it into Russian pipelines.
  Russia diversified its export markets by building the Trans-Siberian oil pipeline to support oil exports to China, Japan and Korea, as well as the Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok gas pipeline in the Russian Far East. Russia has also recently built several major oil and gas refineries, plants and ports. Major hydropower plants such as the Bureya Dam and the Boguchany Dam have been constructed, as well as the restoration of the nuclear industry of Russia, with 1 trillion rubles ($42.7 billion) which were allocated from the federal budget to nuclear power and industry development before 2015. Many nuclear power stations and units are currently being constructed by the state corporation Rosatom in Russia and abroad.
  A construction program of floating nuclear power plants is intended to provide power to Russian Arctic coastal cities and gas rigs, starting in 2012. The Arctic policy of Russia also includes an offshore oilfield in the Pechora Sea which is expected to start producing in early 2012, with the world's first ice-resistant oil platform and first offshore Arctic platform. In August 2011, Rosneft, a Russian government-operated oil company, signed a deal with ExxonMobil for Arctic oil production.
  The construction of a pipeline at a cost of $77  billion, to be jointly funded by Russia and China, was signed off on by Putin in Shanghai on 21 May 2014. On completion, in an estimated 4 to 6 years, the pipeline would deliver natural gas from the state-majority-owned Gazprom to China's state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation for the next 30 years, in a deal worth $400bn.
  In 2014, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project named Putin their Person of the Year Award for furthering corruption and organized crime.
  As noted by Russian journalists after the 2018 presidential inauguration, Putin has since 2007 repeatedly predicted that Russia will become "one of the world's fifth largest economies" roughly within 10 years from that date; thus far this target has not been achieved.
caption: Historical crude oil prices. Economic growth in Putin's first two terms was fueled by the 2000s commodities boom, including high oil prices[10][11]
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