or 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991. He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008. Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election and appointed Putin as Prime Minister, beginning a period of so-called "tandemocracy".[4] In September 2011, following a change in the law extending the presidential term from four years to six,[5] Putin announced that he would seek a third, non-consecutive term as President in the 2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to large-scale protests in many Russian cities. In March 2012 he won the election, which was criticized for procedural irregularities, and is serving a six-year term.[6][7]
Many of Putin's actions are regarded by the domestic opposition and foreign observers as undemocratic.[8] The 2011 Democracy Index stated that Russia was in "a long process of regression [that] culminated in a move from a hybrid to an authoritarian regime" in view of Putin's candidacy and flawed parliamentary elections.[9] In 2014, Russia was temporarily suspended from the G8 group as a result of its annexation of Crimea.[10][11]