Putin

Putin has a PhD degree in economics and wrote his thesis on energy production and distribution. He came into power in 2000 and recognized that Russia's oil and gas reserves were the road back to world power. He convinced Europe to buy Russian gas and sold oil on the world market. This money was used to build up the agriculture business and become self sufficient in food production. The empty food shelves that had plagued the country were replaced with Russian made food stuffs. The profits from fossil fuel helped to build up the military which in turn fired up the economy. Putin learned the lesson of using oil and gas as a bargaining tool to achieve political goals. With the invasion of Ukraine he has learned to use grain exports in the same way forcing countries, especially those in Africa, to refrain from objection to the war. His efforts have been somewhat thwarted as the losses of grain and oil and gas from Ukraine have been made up for by increases in other countries. The Russian people see Putin, who has been in power for 24 years, as the person who cleaned out the money changers and built up the economy. There was so much corruption which began as the old Soviet Union came to an end that Putin could clean up the mess and still keep billions for him and his close friends. The rest of the money went to help the Russian economy and thus he is still a crook but small time compared to the past.