Putin has reached 25 years at the head of Russia, but has he “taken care” of the country, asks Steve Rosenberg

I will never forget New Years 1999.

I worked as a producer in the Moscow bureau of the BBC. Suddenly, extraordinary news appeared: the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigned.

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

“Boris Yeltsin always said he would live out his term,” I wrote. “Today he told the Russians that he had changed his mind.

That was the beginning of my career as a reporter.

And the beginning of Vladimir Putin as the leader of Russia.

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

On leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin's message to Putin was: “Guard Russia!”

I found myself remembering these words of Yeltsin's more and more the closer Russia's war against Ukraine approaches the three-year mark.

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

Above all, for Ukraine, which suffered enormous destruction and casualties in its cities. Almost 20% of its territory is occupied and 10 million of its citizens are displaced.

But also for Russia:

I've been reporting on Putin since he came to power a quarter of a century ago.

On December 31, 1999 who would have thought that Russia's new leader would still be in power two and a half decades later? Or that today Russia will wage war against Ukraine and confront the West?

I often wonder if the course of history would have been drastically different if Yeltsin had chosen someone else to succeed him. The question is, of course, academic. History is full of ifs and maybes.

One thing I can say for sure: for more than twenty-five years I have seen different Putins.

And I'm not the only one.

“The Putin I met, did good business with, set up a NATO-Russia Council with is very, very different to this almost megalomaniac at the moment,” former NATO chief Lord Robertson told me in 2023.

“The man who stood next to me in May 2002, right 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) does not is a nation state.

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

That's one possible explanation for the change we've seen in Putin: his burning ambition to “make Russia great again” (and to make up for what many see as Moscow's defeat in the Cold War) has put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbors— and with the West.

The Kremlin has another explanation.

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

But does Putin himself believe that he has fulfilled Yeltsin's request to “take care of Russia?”

I recently had a chance to find out.

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

“Boris Yeltsin told you to take care of Russia,” I reminded the president. “But what about the significant losses in your so-called 'special military 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 pulled back from the brink.”

He described Yeltsin's Russia as a country losing its sovereignty. He accused the West of “patronizingly patting” Yeltsin on the shoulder while “using Russia for its own purposes”. But he, Putin, is “doing everything,” he said, “to ensure that Russia is an independent sovereign state.”

To present himself as a defender of Russian sovereignty: is this a view he invented in retrospect to try to justify the war in Ukraine? Or does Putin really believe this about modern Russian history?

I'm still not sure. not yet But I feel this is a key question.

The answer to it could affect how the war ends—and Russia's future direction.