...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...said on Monday he had signed a decree rehabilitating Crimea's Tatars, an ethnic group accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany and exiled under Stalin.
"I have signed a decree to rehabilitate the Crimean Tatar population of Crimea, the Armenian population, Germans, Greeks, all those who suffered during Stalin's purges," Putin told a government meeting.
Crimea's 300,000 Tatars, who make up around 12 percent of the population, largely boycotted a disputed referendum last month in which nearly 97 percent of voters chose to split from Ukraine and join Russia.
The decree is seen is an attempt to win the sympathies of Tatars, who view the Kremlin with distrust and are seeking a quota system to ensure power sharing in the local government.
Crimea's entire Tatar population was deported to Central Asia at the end of World War Two.
They began returning to Crimea under former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and became Ukrainian nationals after that country won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.