Vladimir Putin is the current President of Russia. Under his first term as president, the Russian economy grew significantly for eight consecutive years, with GDP at purchasing power parity increasing by 72%. The growth was the result of the commodity economic boom of the 2000s, the recovery from the depression following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and appropriate economic and fiscal policies.

Falling oil prices and international economic sanctions imposed after the 2014 Crimean crisis and Russian military intervention in the Donbass war in eastern Ukraine, caused by Putin's foreign policy, led to a reduction in Russian GDP by 3 .7% in 2015, although the Russian economy rebounded in 2016 with slight GDP growth of 0.3%, marking the end of the Great Recession. In the 2018 Russian presidential election he received 76% of the vote and was re-elected for a further six-year term.

In 2022 he started the war of invading Ukraine, attracting much harsh criticism from world organizations.