Dmitry Medvedev official large photo

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (Russian: Дми́трий Анато́льевич Медве́дев?·i, Dmitrij Anatol′evič Medvedev; Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ mʲɪˈdvʲedʲɪf]; born 14 September 1965) is the third and current President of Russia, inaugurated on 7 May 2008. He won the presidential election held on 2 March 2008 with about 70% of the popular vote.





Medvedev was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government on 14 November 2005. Formerly Vladimir Putin's chief of presidential staff, he was also the Chairman of Gazprom's board of directors, a post he had held, for the second time, since 2000. Medvedev's candidacy was selected by then President Vladimir Putin. On 10 December 2007, he was informally endorsed as a candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections by the largest Russian political party, United Russia and several pro-presidential parties, and officially endorsed by United Russia on 17 December 2007. A technocrat and political appointee, Medvedev had never held elective office before 2008.

Medvedev was born to professor Anatoly Afanasevich Medvedev and Yulia Veniaminovna Medvedeva (née Shaposhnikova), and brought up in Kupchino district of Leningrad. He grew up in a 40-square-metre (430 sq ft) flat (which was considered quite large for a family of three in the Soviet Union at that time).

Medvedev was a B student at the secondary school. His future wife, Svetlana Linnik, was his classmate. Medvedev was fond of sports, in particular weightlifting. He was a fan of English bands Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.

He graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987 (together with Ilya Yeliseyev, Anton Ivanov, Nikolay Vinnichenko and Konstantin Chuychenko) and in 1990 received his PhD in private law from the graduate school of the same university. Anatoly Sobchak, an early democratic politician of the 1980s and 1990s, was one of his professors, and Medvedev later participated in Sobchak's successful Saint Petersburg mayoral campaign. In 1990 he worked in Leningrad Municipal Soviet of People's Deputies under the supervision of Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Churov, later the head of the President election committee, also started under Putin at that time.

Between 1991 and 1999 Medvedev, in addition to his business activities and participation in the Saint Petersburg City Administration, held a position of docent at his alma mater university, now renamed to Saint Petersburg State University.