ABSTRACT
The gunmen announced that their captives would be freed only when Russia withdrew all its troops from Chechnya—occupied since 1995 as a result of the Chechen rebellion. Local authorities were too stunned to develop a plan of action, and the Russian government reacted slowly and deceitfully. The first of many paradoxes about Vladimir Putin, who has served as Russia's president from 2000 to 2008, prime minister from 2008 to 2012, and president again beginning in 2012, is the contrast between the obscurity of his early, undistinguished career as a civil servant and the dominant role he played as the authoritarian ruler of his country of the twenty-first century. Vladimir Putin's first and continuing priority was to bring prosperity, order, and stability to Russia. Iran's rapidly developing nuclear program posed another Middle Eastern dilemma for Russia and the United States. Throughout the Putin era, Russia strongly opposed an Iran-related project sponsored by the United States.
