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From Wikipedia:
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈputʲɪn]) (born October 7, 1952 in Leningrad, USSR; now Saint Petersburg, Russia) is a Russian politician who was the 2nd President of the Russian Federation (from 2000 to 2008) and is the current Prime Minister of Russia as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on December 31, 1999, succeeding Boris Yeltsin, and then won the 2000 presidential election. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term lasting until May 7, 2008. |
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Russia (Russian: Россия, Rossiya), also the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a transcontinental country extending over much of northern Eurasia. It is a semi-presidential republic comprising 83 federal subjects. Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It is also close to the U.S. state of Alaska, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Japan across relatively small stretches of water (the Bering Strait, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and La Pérouse Strait, respectively).
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