His face may not adorn the rouble, but Vladimir Putin's image is very much stamped on 21st-Century Russia.
After the hungry, often desperate years of the Yeltsin era, Mr Putin ushered in a new era of prosperity when he served his first two terms as president from 2000 to 2008.
Unable to stand again because of term limits, he became prime minister instead, though most analysts agreed he retained real power.
The announcement that the 58-year-old is standing again for president in 2012 - an election he looks all but certain to win - will prompt some Russians to ask what he can offer that is new.
Up the ladder
Mr Putin rapidly ascended the political ladder in 1999 when Boris Yeltsin first made him prime minister, then acting president in his place.
The former Federal Security Service (ex-KGB) director's talents and instincts continued to show through: to his admirers he represented order and stability, to his critics - repression and fear.
Independent media and civil society struggled under his rule and he took a consistently hard line in the Chechen conflict.
Yet he struck a chord with those who remembered the chaos of the 1990s, when basic machinery of state such as the welfare system virtually seized up and the security forces looked inept.
Investor confidence climbed back after the nadir of the 1998 rouble devaluation, and economic recovery, buoyed by high prices for oil and gas exports, helped restore a sense of stability not known since communist times.
Political opposition was weak, partly because of a genuine feel-good factor, but also because his rule discouraged democratic debate.
In the 2000 election, he took 53% of the vote in the first round and, four years later, was re-elected with a landslide majority of 71%.
The 2004 ballot result "reflected [Mr Putin's] consistently high public approval rating", outside (OSCE) observers noted, but also talked of the contest's "dearth of meaningful debate and genuine pluralism".
Obliged to stand down as president in 2008 by Russia's constitutional limit of two consecutive terms in office, he passed the reins to his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, and became prime minister. But few have doubted who really holds sway in Russia.
Black belt
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became a KGB spy after graduating from university, and served in East Germany.
He enjoys a macho image, helped by election stunts like flying into Chechnya on a fighter jet in 2000 and appearing at a Russian bikers' rally after the 2011 parliamentary election date was announced. He possessed a black belt in Judo.
He has been described as a workaholic by his wife and mother of his two daughters, Lyudmila.
For many Russian liberals, Mr Putin's KGB past is disturbing, with its authoritarian associations.
A decade after Boris Yeltsin famously offered Russia's regions "their fill of sovereignty", Mr Putin brought in a system of presidential envoys seen by some as overseers for elected governors.
Putin allies control much of the media and his rule saw creeping controls over foreign-funded non-government organisations, which largely focus on exposing human rights abuses.
The man who sent troops back into Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 kept it under Moscow's control through military force, direct or proxy, and strict non-negotiation with the rebels.
The price was increasingly violent attacks by the separatists, which reached a horrifying level in 2004 with the Beslan school seizure.
Mr Putin's patriotic rhetoric and evident nostalgia for the USSR - he once famously called its collapse "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th Century - have played well with much of the public.
But the flip side may be a disturbing rise in nationalism, taking its most sinister form in hate crimes directed at ethnic minorities such as African foreign students.
Wielding clout
Mr Putin gradually eased liberals out of government, often replacing them with more hardline allies or neutrals seen as little more than yes-men.
Yeltsin-era "oligarchs" like Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky - businessmen who grew rich in the chaos of the first privatisations - ended up as fugitives living in exile abroad.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once head of oil giant Yukos and Russia's richest man, is now in jail for tax evasion.
Mr Putin's Kremlin was accused of abusing its huge energy clout, allegedly punishing fellow ex-Soviet states like Ukraine with price hikes when they leant towards the West.
Further abroad, Mr Putin allied himself with Washington's "war on terror", comparing Chechen separatists to al-Qaeda, but he also opposed the invasion of Iraq and caused consternation in the US by inviting Hamas to Moscow for talks after their Palestinian election victory.
If, as expected, he returns to the Kremlin after the March 2011 election, he may find himself facing different challenges from those in 2000.
For one thing, there is a growing awareness of the need to move beyond a natural-resources economy and pursue real economic reform, some analysts say.
Mr Putin may have hinted at his awareness of this when his candidacy for 2012 was announced.
"The task of the government is not only to pour honey into a cup, but sometimes to give bitter medicine," he said.
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