Putin has been at the helm of Russia for 25 years, but has he “taken care of” the country, asks Steve Rosenberg

I will never forget New Year’s Eve 1999.

I worked as a producer in the BBC’s Moscow bureau. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russian President Boris Yeltsin has 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 BBC report.

“Boris Yeltsin always said he would last his entire term in office,” I wrote. “Today he told the Russians that he has changed his mind.”

It was the beginning of my career as a reporter.

And the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s term as Russian leader.

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

As he left the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s parting message to Putin was: “Take care of Russia!”

I remember these words of Yeltsin more and more as Russia’s war against Ukraine approaches the three-year mark.

That’s because President Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine had devastating consequences.

Especially for Ukraine, which has experienced massive destruction and casualties in its cities. Almost 20% of its territory has been occupied and 10 million of its citizens have been displaced.

But also for Russia:

I’ve been covering Putin since he came to power a quarter century ago.

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

I often wonder whether the course of history would have been drastically different if Yeltsin had chosen someone else as his successor. The question is, of course, academic. The story is full of ifs, buts and maybes.

One thing I can say for sure: I have seen different Putins over the last 25 years.

And I’m not the only one.

“The Putin with whom I met, with whom I did good business and with whom I founded a NATO-Russia Council, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniacal current moment,” the former NATO head told me. Chief Lord Robertson in 2023.

“The man who stood right next to me in May 2002 and said Ukraine was a sovereign and independent nation-state that would make its own decisions about security is now the man who says (Ukraine) is not a nation-state .”

“I think that Vladimir Putin has very thin skin and has big ambitions for his country. The Soviet Union was recognized as the world’s second superpower. Russia cannot make any claims in this direction. And I think that ate 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 offset what many perceive as Moscow’s defeat in the Cold War) set Russia on an inevitable collision course Russia with its neighbors – and with the West.

The Kremlin has a different explanation.

From the speeches he gives and the comments he makes, Putin appears to be driven by resentment, by the overarching feeling that Russia has been lied to and disrespected for years and that its security concerns have been dismissed by the West.

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

I recently had the opportunity to find out.

More than four hours into his lengthy 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’, the Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region, the sanctions, the high inflation. Do you think you’ve taken care of your country?”

“Yes,” President Putin replied. “And I didn’t just care about that. We have pulled back from the edge of the abyss.”

He portrayed Yeltsin’s Russia as a country that had lost its sovereignty. He accused the West of giving Yeltsin a “patronizing pat on the back” while at the same time “instrumentalizing Russia for its own purposes.” But he, Putin, is doing “everything,” he said, “to ensure that Russia is an independent sovereign state.”

Portraying himself as a defender of Russian sovereignty: is this a view he made up after the fact to justify the war in Ukraine? Or does Putin really believe in this interpretation of modern Russian history?

I’m still not sure. Not yet. But I feel that it is a key question.

The answer to that could well have an impact on how the war ends – and on Russia’s future direction.