Mark Galeotti - We Need to Talk About Putin

7 October 1952 Born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg)

1964 Begins to learn judo

19705 Reads Law at Leningrad State University

1975 Joins the KGB

1983 Marries Lyudmila Putina (ne Shkrebneva)

198590 Serves in Dresden, East Germany

1990 Returns to Leningrad and moves onto the KGBs active reserve Assigned to work at Leningrad State University

19914 Works in Leningrad Mayors Office (the name St Petersburg is restored in October 1991)

1991 Formally leaves the KGB

19946 First deputy mayor of St Petersburg

1996 Moves to Moscow after the electoral defeat of Mayor Anatoly Sobchak

19967 Deputy head of the Presidential Property Management Directorate

19978 Deputy head, then first deputy head of the Presidential Administration

19989 Director of the Federal Security Service

1999 Prime minister

1999 Start of the Second Chechen War

20004 First presidential term

2003 Arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky

20048 Second presidential term

200812 Serves as prime minister under Dmitry Medvedev

2008 Invasion of Georgia

2011 Medvedev nominates Putin for the presidency

201218 Third presidential term

201112 Bolotnaya Square protests against election rigging

2014 Sochi Winter Olympics

Annexation of Crimea

Intervention in Donbas

2014 Divorces Lyudmila

2015 Intervention in Syria

201824? Fourth presidential term

Andropov, Yuri The formidable KGB chief and then Soviet leader, whom Putin appears to idolise but not understand.

FSB The Federal Security Service, the main internal counter-intelligence and security agency that succeeded the KGB.

FSO The Federal Protection Service, the small army of bodyguards, Kremlin riflemen, food tasters and phone tappers, whose job is to keep Putin and the rest of the government safe and happy.

Gorbachev, Mikhail The last Soviet leader, who reformed the USSR out of existence and appears in many ways to embody precisely what Putin is not.

GRU The Main Intelligence Directorate, the military intelligence agency.

Ivanov, Sergei The urbane KGB veteran who was Putins chief of staff and was regarded as a potential successor, but took semi-retirement in 2016.

Kabayeva, Alina The Olympic gold medal-winning rhythmic gymnast rumoured to be Putins current lover.

Kadyrov, Ramzan An unpredictable and violent man who professes loyalty to Putin while running the Chechen Republic as a virtually independent fiefdom.

KGB The Committee of State Security, the all-encompassing Soviet domestic security and foreign intelligence service.

Kudrin, Alexei A long-term associate of Putins, once a friend and token economic liberal in his government, now somewhat estranged.

Medvedev, Dmitry Putins long-suffering prime minister, less his colleague and more his gopher.

Navalny, Alexei The main opposition figure today, an anti-corruption campaigner who uses the Internet to bypass the Kremlins efforts to keep him off television.

Patrushev, Nikolai Secretary of the Security Council, former head of the FSB, and a man who makes Putin look like a moderate.

Presidential Administration The most powerful institution in Putins Russia, in effect his government-above-the-government.

Prigozhin, Yevgeny A man who has done well by doing whatever Putin needs doing. He is known as Putins chef because he came to know him when he ran a restaurant in St Petersburg; his companies still provide food for the Kremlin and many government agencies.

Roldugin, Sergei A cellist and childhood friend of Putins who is now thought to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Rotenberg, Arkady and Boris Childhood friends and judo sparring partners of Putins, who have done very well in business under his rule.

Sechin, Igor Head of the oil firm Rosneft and Putins former deputy; the Western media calls him Russias Darth Vader, but no one there would dare.

Shoigu, Sergei Defence minister since 2012, and perhaps the most powerful and influential figure within the government who didnt get to that position by being a friend of Putins.

Sobchak, Anatoly Putins old professor at law school and the first democratically elected mayor of St Petersburg, who appointed him as his deputy.

Surkov, Vladislav Putins former political technologist and the impresario behind his fake political system, now unofficial boss of south-eastern Ukraine.

SVR The Foreign Intelligence Service, Russias main espionage agency.

Zolotov, Viktor Putins former chief bodyguard, now head of the National Guard, a thuggish loyalist through and through.

White Rabbit in Moscow is a quintessentially new Russian restaurant. Under a glass dome above a glitzy shopping centre close to the Stalinist Gothic tower of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is the kind of place where special little chairs are placed next to female diners for their handbags, where the (hefty) bill arrives inside a matryoshka nesting doll and where the idea of a fusion of traditional Russian and international cuisine runs to pine-flavoured ice cream. Im too miserly and too plain in my tastes to be a fan, but its flamboyant and prestigious, a place at which to be seen. I shouldnt have been surprised that, when invited to choose a place for lunch, a former official of the Presidential Administration (Vladimir Putins chancery and the most powerful institution in Russia) would pick White Rabbit. Even an overpriced meal and lots of naturally Crimean wine was not enough to get him to be really indiscreet, but one of the more revealing parts of the conversation was when he launched into a lengthy and moderately profane diatribe about the Wests continued misunderstanding of the boss. Seriously, I read some of the shit in your newspapers, that your politicians say, that your experts write, and I just dont know where they get it. No wonder weve got into the mess were in now. And you know what? He waved an almost-empty glass and frowned at me as if I were a representative of the entire Western journalistic, political and pundit class. It made my job harder. How? What kind of relations can we have with you all, so long as you dont really see us, you dont hear us? So long as you read whatever you want into the presidents every word and his last fart. My job was to try and communicate, but it didnt matter what we said, what we put into the bosss speeches, everyone just assumed they knew what we really meant, whatever we actually said. Everyone thinks they know Vladimir Vladimirovich.

We need to talk about Putin. We really do. Not just because he is, like it or not, one of the most important people on the planet, and nor because of the impact of the geopolitical struggle he is waging with the West, with bluster and bluff, memes and money. It is also because he has become a global symbol, which everyone defines in their own way. As the irate and two-thirds-drunk official suggested, he is like a Rorschach inkblot test used by psychologists: the splash of pigment is deliberately ambiguous; what we read into it says more about what is going on in our heads than what is on the paper.

Because the irony is that, for all that he has been a fixture of global politics for almost twenty years now, for all that there are biographies of his life and calendars of his bare-chested antics and for all that he is a familiar subject of satirists and pundits alike, we still dont really know who he is. Ruthless autocrat or saviour of a beleaguered nation? KGB veteran or pious Christian? Brooding grandmaster of global geopolitics or self-indulgent kleptocrat? Hes a bit of each of them, but none of these labels truly sum him up and thats partly the point. Putin is ferociously private not just on his own account, but also on behalf of his family, both out of preference and political calculation; his aloofness allows everyone to construct their own personal Putin.