Putin arrives on the helm of Russia at 25 years of age, however has he “taken care” of the nation, asks Steve Rosenberg

I’ll always remember New Year’s Eve 1999.

I used to be working as a producer within the BBC’s Moscow workplace. Suddenly the information arrived: Russian President Boris Yeltsin had resigned.

His determination to resign took everybody abruptly, together with the British press in Moscow. There was no correspondent within the workplace when the information broke. This meant I needed to step in to write down and broadcast my first BBC dispatch.

“Boris Yeltsin at all times stated he would full the complete time period,” I wrote. “Today he advised the Russians that he had modified his thoughts.”

It was the start of my profession as a journalist.

And the start of Vladimir Putin as chief of Russia.

After Yeltsin’s resignation, in accordance with the Russian structure, Prime Minister Putin grew to become performing president. Three months later he gained the elections.

Leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s parting instruction to Putin was: “Take care of Russia!”

I’ve discovered myself remembering these phrases of Yeltsin increasingly as Russia’s conflict towards Ukraine nears the three-year mark.

This is as a result of President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had devastating penalties.

First and foremost for Ukraine, which has seen large destruction and casualties in its cities. Nearly 20% of its territory has been occupied and 10 million residents have been displaced.

But additionally for Russia:

I’ve been overlaying Putin since he got here to energy 1 / 4 of a century in the past.

On December 31, 1999, who would have thought that the brand new Russian chief would nonetheless be in energy two and a half many years later? Or that Russia would wage conflict on Ukraine immediately and confront the West?

I typically marvel if the course of historical past would have been drastically totally different if Yeltsin had chosen another person to succeed him. The query, in fact, is educational. History is filled with ifs, buts and maybes.

One factor I can say for positive: in twenty-five years I’ve seen a number of Putins.

And I’m not the one one.

“The Putin that I met, with whom I did good enterprise, with whom I arrange a Nato-Russia Council, may be very, very totally different from this quasi-megalomaniac of the second,” former NATO chief Lord Robertson advised me in 2023 .

“The man who stood subsequent to me in May 2002, proper subsequent to me, and stated that Ukraine is a sovereign, impartial nationwide state that may make its personal safety selections, is now the person who says that ( Ukraine) will not be a nation state.

“I feel Vladimir Putin has a really skinny pores and skin and large ambition for his nation. The Soviet Union has been acknowledged because the second superpower on the planet. Russia can not make any claims in that course. And I feel this has devoured his ego.”

This is one potential rationalization for the change now we have seen in Putin: his burning ambition to “make Russia nice once more” (and to compensate for what many understand as Moscow’s defeat within the Cold War) has put Russia in a inevitable collision course with its neighbors – and with the West.

The Kremlin has a special rationalization.

From the speeches he offers and the feedback he makes, Putin appears pushed by resentment, by the all-encompassing sense that for years Russia has been deceived and disrespected, and that its safety considerations have been dismissed by the West.

But does Putin himself consider that he has fulfilled Yeltsin’s demand to “handle Russia?”

I lately had the possibility to search out out.

More than 4 hours into his lengthy end-of-year press convention, Putin invited me to ask a query.

“Boris Yeltsin advised you to handle Russia,” I reminded the president. “But what in regards to the important losses in your so-called ‘particular army operation’, the Ukrainian troops within the Kursk area, the sanctions, the excessive inflation. Do you suppose you’ve gotten taken care of your nation?”

“Yes,” President Putin responded. “And I did not simply cope with that. We pulled ourselves again from the sting of the abyss.”

He described Yeltsin’s Russia as a rustic that was dropping its sovereignty. He accused the West of “patting” Yeltsin on the again as he “used Russia for his personal functions.” But he, Putin, “is doing every part,” he stated, “to make sure that Russia is an impartial sovereign state.”

Presenting himself as a defender of Russian sovereignty: is that this the imaginative and prescient he developed retrospectively to attempt to justify the conflict in Ukraine? Or does Putin actually consider this imaginative and prescient of recent Russian historical past?

I’m unsure but. Not but. But I really feel prefer it’s a key subject.

The reply might have an effect on how the conflict ends and Russia’s future course.