Putin has reached 25 years of ruling Russia, but has he ‘taken care’ of the country, asks Steve Rosenberg

I will never forget New Year’s Eve 1999.

I worked as a producer in the Moscow bureau of the BBC. Suddenly there was a sharp news: Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned.

His decision to resign surprised everyone, including the British press in Moscow. There was no reporter in the office when the news broke. This meant I had to step in to write and deliver my first dispatch to the BBC.

“Boris Yeltsin always said that he would wait for his powers,” I wrote. “He told the Russians today that he changed his mind.”

That was the beginning of my career as a reporter.

And the beginning of the rule of Russia by Vladimir Putin.

After Yeltsin’s resignation, in accordance with the Russian constitution, Prime Minister Putin became acting president. Three months later, he won the election.

Leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin gave Putin a farewell: “Take care of Russia!”

I recall these words of Yeltsin more and more, the closer to the three-year mark of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

That’s because President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has had devastating consequences.

First of all, for Ukraine, in whose cities there are huge destructions and victims. Almost 20% of its territory was occupied, and 10 million of its citizens were forced to relocate.

But also for Russia:

I have been writing about Putin since he came to power a quarter of a century ago.

Who would have thought on December 31, 1999, that two and a half decades later, Russia’s new leader would still be in power? Or the fact that today Russia will wage war with Ukraine and oppose the West?

I often wonder if the course of history would have been radically different if Yeltsin had chosen someone else to replace him. The question is, of course, academic. History is full of ifs, but also possibles.

I can say one thing with confidence: in twenty-five years I have seen different Putins.

And I’m not the only one like that.

“The Putin I met, who did good things, created the Russia-NATO Council, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniac now,” former NATO chief Lord Robertson told me in 2023.

“The man who stood next to me in May 2002, next to me, and said that Ukraine is a sovereign and independent nation-state that will make its own security decisions, is now the man who says that (Ukraine) is not is a nation state.

“I think that Vladimir Putin has a very thin skin and huge ambitions for his country. The Soviet Union was recognized as the second superpower in the world. Russia cannot make any claims in this direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”

That’s one possible explanation for the change we’re seeing in Putin: His fervent drive to “make Russia great again” (and make up for what many see as Moscow’s Cold War defeat) has put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbors — and the West.

The Kremlin has another explanation.

From the speeches he gives, the comments he makes, it seems that Putin is driven by resentment, a general feeling that Russia has been lied to and disrespected for years, that the West has dismissed its security concerns.

But does Putin himself believe that he fulfilled Yeltsin’s demand to “protect Russia”?

Recently I had to find out.

More than four hours after his lengthy year-end press conference, Putin invited me to ask a question.

“Boris Yeltsin told you to protect Russia,” I reminded the president. “And what about the significant losses in your so-called “special operation”, Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region, sanctions, high inflation. Do you think you have taken care of your country?”

“Yes,” answered President Putin. “And I didn’t just take care of it. We’re off the edge.”

He portrayed Yeltsin’s Russia as a country losing its sovereignty. He accused the West of giving Yeltsin a “condescending pat on the back,” “using Russia for their own purposes.” But he, Putin, “did everything,” he said, “so that Russia was an independent sovereign state.”

Presenting himself as a defender of Russian sovereignty: is this a view he invented in retrospect to try to justify the war in Ukraine? Does Putin really believe in this view of modern Russian history?

I’m still not sure. Not yet. But I feel this is the key question.

The answer to it may well affect how the war ends – and Russia’s future direction.