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Vladimir Putin The Russian government is one of constant ideological change, from the left of October Revolutionist Lenin to the extreme right wing values of Josef Stalin during World War II. The current president is a man by the name of Vladimir Putin, who recently in March won reelection. Up till recently not many things were known about the uptight looking fellow, however recently that has all changed. Putin studied law at State University in St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad. After graduating in 1975, he worked in the KGB's foreign intelligence service, mainly in Germany. He left the KGB in 1990 and became an ally of liberal Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg, whom he met during his study. He first became Mr. Sobchak's head of external relations and then served as deputy mayor from March 1994. When Mr Sobchak lost power in 1996 it was another liberal, deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, who recommended him for a job in the presidential administration. There he rose to be deputy chief-of-staff before being asked, in July 1998, to take charge of one of Russia's new security services, the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), replacing Nikolai Kovalyov. Subsequently, President Boris Yeltsin appointed him as head