Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is the current President of Russia in his second stint as president since 2012, having previously served from 2000 until 2008. In between his two stints as president he served as Prime Minister of Russia. He was previously an agent of the KGB.

Putin is widely considered to be a dictator; many watchdog organizations have cited human rights abuses and accusations of political corruption in his regime, and often his political opponents tend to mysteriously "disappear". He also has many alleged criminal connections.

His style of governance seems to be based on that of former Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Villainy

 * Putin is homophobic and transphobic; in 2012, he banned gay pride parades and protests in Moscow for 100 years.
 * His administration has been linked to domestic terrorist attacks in Russia.
 * He has enacted purges of several of his political enemies, similar to those carried out by Joseph Stalin.
 * Though he has denied this, there is evidence that his administration directly interfered in the United States' 2016 presidential election.
 * He has banned protests.
 * He is allies with Bashar al-Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was also friendly with Muammar Gaddafi.
 * He has suppressed all mass media that is not controlled by the state.
 * His invasions of Ukraine, Georgia, and Crimea.
 * Despite the Russian Constitution forbidding the use of torture, Putin allows Federal Security Service officers to use torture.
 * During Putin’s years in office, a series of Russian democrats, journalists and opposition leaders have been killed in mysterious circumstances.
 * He is the architect of the Second Chechen War.
 * Putin has displayed traits of antisemitism, as Jews are the primary target for racism in Russia.

Human right violations
His record on human rights has been marked by the flattening of Chechnya, the demolition of Georgia, the crackdown of all media, especially independently-owned media that has been critical of the Kremlin such as NTV, the instigation of an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine that culminated in the accidental downing of a civilian aircraft, the bombing of aid convoys, the slew of Kremlin opponents dropping dead from polonium poisoning, Russian soldiers taking long "vacations", and the suppression and abuse of protestors.