Vladimir Putin: How an unknown became the most powerful man in Russia

It's December 31, 1999, just before midnight.

There is a program on Russian television that has never been seen before or since: Russian President Boris Yeltsin gives his New Year's speech.

The power politician's facial muscles move just as little as the decorations on the Christmas tree behind him.

But the words that Yeltsin speaks turn the entire power structure of the vast empire on its head.

»Today is an unusually important day for me.

I want to say a little more than I usually do.

I would like to ask you for forgiveness for the fact that many of our dreams have not come true," he begins and ends with a farewell and the wish that his compatriots will be happy.

Then Yeltsin opens the door of his office and greets a thin man with an expressionless face and wide eyes.

Vladimir Putin, his successor.

Yeltsin wishes him good luck, hands over a document folder and with it, so to speak, the rooms in the Kremlin.

Then he takes his coat, says goodbye and goes out into the Moscow winter night.

This production begins Putin's rise to become the most powerful man in Russia.

To the temporary reformer of his country.

To the autocrat.

And finally to the dictator who brings the war back to Europe.

Six months before this scene, Putin was a political unknown.

Then the powerful Yeltsin clan chose him as the successor to the no longer tenable family patriarch.

In a 4-part special series of the SPIEGEL foreign podcast Eight Billion, Russia expert Christian Neef tells how Putin came to power by chance and then shaped the country according to his ideas and fears.

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On the occasion of the Russian presidential election in 2024, the 4-part podcast series tells of Vladimir Putin's rise to power from 1999 to 2014. From the largely unknown politician to the man who brought the war back to Europe.

“This selection was definitely surprising,” he says in the podcast.

»Not for the Yeltsin family, of course, but for everyone else.

Not only for journalists or for the Russian people themselves or for abroad, but also for all political scientists and everyone who had to do with politics in Moscow.

The first episode of the podcast series tells of 'Operation Successor': How Yeltsin and his clan create an artificial party that is supposed to win the Duma election for Putin.

How they installed the current Defense Minister and then popular hero Sergei Shoigu as party leader so that Putin would not suffer political damage in the event of a defeat.

And how clearly the president-elect defined what his Russia would look like at the turn of the millennium.

“Even in his so-called millennium message, Putin says very clear things that are actually anti-Western,” analyzes Christian Neef.

»He says that the role of state power has always been greater in Russia than in Western political culture.

Therefore, Russia cannot become a copy of the USA or England, where liberal values ​​have a long historical tradition.

So the state needs to be expanded.

The state, he says, is a completely different instrument here than it is in Western countries.

The human being, the individual, must step back.«

You can listen to the first episode of the podcast series “Putin’s Rise” here:

The foreign podcast Eight Billion appears every Friday on SPIEGEL.de and everywhere there are podcasts.

Do you have any suggestions, criticism, topic suggestions or even praise for this show?

Then write us an email to eight.milliarden@spiegel.de.