On March 26, 2000, Vladimir Putin was elected president of the country in the presidential elections in Russia.
After 1996, Putin moved to Moscow and held secondary positions in the administration of Boris Yeltsin. From 1997, he became deputy head of the Kremlin administration. In 1998, he was appointed director of the Federal Security Service of Russia, the successor to the KGB. While in this position, oligarch Boris Berezovsky became famous for his financing of the Wahhabi sect in Chechnya, led by Shamil Basayev, which at that time was fighting to overthrow the moderate president of the republic, Aslan Maskhadov, and was responsible for significant terror against Russia. Despite his high position and broad powers, Putin did not take any action against the oligarch and his activities in Chechnya.
In March 1999, he became Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, and in August - Prime Minister. Since December of the same year, he has served as President. Initially, Putin became the interim President of Russia on December 31, 1999, replacing Boris Yeltsin, and took office as the titular President on May 7, 2000 after the presidential elections. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term.
Due to the constitutional limitation of mandates, in 2008, Putin stepped down from office and handed it over to his successor Dmitry Medvedev, whom he personally selected and presented to the Russian people as a candidate for president. A few months later, Medvedev appointed Putin as Prime Minister.
In 2008, he was replaced by Dmitry Medvedev in the presidential post and was appointed Prime Minister of Russia. In 2012, Vladimir Putin won the presidential election again and was elected President of Russia for a third term on May 7, 2012. He was re-elected for a new term in 2018.