An era in which Russia moved forward and stepped back

MOSCOW -- Russians were steeled for momentous change at the turn of the millennium.

On Dec. 31, 1999, many feared the dreaded Y2K computer bug would hit especially hard at Russia's deteriorating military facilities or its Chernobyl-style nuclear power stations.

But the big New Year's Eve surprise was political.

An hour before midnight tolled in Russia's Far East, an ailing Boris Yeltsin went on TV to announce he was resigning and making Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, acting president.

That set in motion an extraordinary era in Russia history -- both for how much the country has moved forward and how far it has stepped back.

Many Russians were unsure what to expect from a Putin presidency.

The country was deep in its second war in Chechnya, the ruble had collapsed -- and Putin himself had been prime minister less than four months. Putin came across as a dull bureaucrat, especially compared with boisterous, hard-drinking Yeltsin.

The next eight years filled out the picture. Here is a look back at the high and low points of Putin's tenure.

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An early surprise came six weeks after Putin became acting president. The new leader sat down with TV reporters at a ski lodge in southern Russia and talked about Russia's tens of billions of dollars in foreign debt.

"We have looked like pilferers," he said.

It seemed a remarkable moment of candor. The debt was not only paid off, but paid off early.

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A surprise of a much different sort came that August, when the Kursk nuclear submarine exploded and sank, killing all 118 people aboard. Not only did Russian authorities wait two days to announce the accident, but Putin didn't interrupt his vacation to take charge of the disaster.

Was he, after all, a Homo Sovieticus, a man stunted by KGB training and conditioned to keep bad news secret?

Putin's explanation was that he was afraid he would interfere with the rescue operations -- perhaps the only time he has played the role of wallflower.

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Putin came in for criticism on Russian TV over the Kursk disaster -- but the days of independent-minded television were numbered.

By the following spring, the boldest of the nationwide channels, NTV, had been forced under the thumb of the state natural gas monopoly. Dissident tycoon Boris Berezovsky soon lost control of two channels.

Investigative TV shows disappeared, replaced by movies, game shows and spectacularly tacky variety hours.

Putin and other Russian officials portrayed the state television takeovers as strictly business matters. The same argument was used for the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- an oil tycoon and Putin critic -- on a Siberian airport's runway.

But little of consequence happens in Russia without Kremlin approval, and critics noted that politically compliant moguls weren't under pressure.

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Although some tycoons fell afoul of the Kremlin, Putin's years were rich grazing for the business-savvy. Moscow became home to more billionaires than New York, and Mercedes saloon cars are all over Moscow's increasingly traffic-choked streets.

Huge mansions called "cottages" rose on the city's outskirts, other newly wealthy Russians bought flats in Europe's tallest building.

Putin himself has shown little taste for ostentation. But with no culture of accountability for high officials, Putin is vulnerable to unsubstantiated speculation that he has gotten rich in office -- which he denies.

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In marked contrast to his handling of the Kursk disaster, Putin was quick to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks -- the first world leader to call President Bush and offer support. He also raised no objections to the U.S. establishing air bases in Central Asian countries that the Kremlin historically has jealously regarded as its turf.

But the sympathy of 2001 dissipated, and was replaced by anger and resentment -- over alleged U.S. support of peaceful uprisings in other former Soviet states, over U.S. support of an independent Kosovo and the general sense that Washington wanted to block his attempts to restore Russia's superpower role.

Last year, while praising the Red Army's valor in World War II, Putin appeared to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and the U.S., decrying "disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness ... just as it was in the time of the Third Reich."

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The September 2004 school massacre at Beslan was likely the end of illusions Putin would become a Western-style leader. He remained publicly silent for a day and a half as Chechen terrorists held more than a thousand hostages at the Beslan school.

When it ended in hideous carnage that killed 334 people, more than half of them children, Putin seemed unable to comfort the traumatized nation.

Less than two weeks later, he used Beslan as justification for sweeping electoral-law changes under which governors would no longer be popularly elected and individual candidates couldn't run for parliament.

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When Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had written scathingly about Beslan and Putin's policies in Chechnya, was gunned down in her apartment building, Putin waited even longer than during the Kursk disaster to go public. When he did, it was chilling for reporters working in a country considered among the most dangerous for journalists.

The killing was disgusting, Putin said, but dismissed her work as "very minor." He appeared most upset that the killing had damaged Russia's image.

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If Putin's politics eventually became clear, he has remained opaque as a person. Putin denies the charge that he's a man who loves only power. "They say that the worst addiction is to power," he said recently. "I have never felt that. I have never been addicted to anything."

But is Putin, this paragon of discipline, actually an addict in denial? As prime minister, healthy and vigorous at age 55, he would be sure to have a hand on the Russian steering wheel, and that means there are sure to be more surprises ahead.