Vyacheslav Volodin

Vyacheslav Viktorovich Volodin (Вячеслав Викторович Володин, ; born 4 February 1964) is a Russian politician who currently serves as the 10th Chairman of the State Duma (since 5 October 2016).

He is a former aide to President Vladimir Putin.

Volodin was born 4 February 1964 in the village of Alexeyevka, Khvalynsky District, Saratov Oblast, in a large family.

His father was the captain of the river fleet; he died at the age of 51 in 1969.

After the death of his father, he was brought up by his stepfather.

His sister is an employee of a consulting firm, and his brother is a military pensioner.

All of them, according to Volodin himself, live in the Saratov Oblast.

His mother graduated from the Saratov Pedagogical College.

After completing her studies, she refused a job assignment to Leningrad and remained in her native region, because she did not want to leave her elderly mother alone.

She worked as a primary school teacher in a rural school.

Volodin graduated in mechanical engineering from the Faculty of organization and technology of the Saratov Institute of Mechanization of Agriculture in 1986, and then in law from the Russian State Service Academy under the President of the Russian Federation in 1995.

In 1990, he was elected as a member of the Saratov City Duma.

Since 1992, Volodin was the Deputy of the Head of Administration of Saratov, since 1994 deputy chairman of the Saratov Oblast Duma and in 1996 he was appointed to the Vice Governor of the Saratov region.

He obtained a Ph.D. in law from the Interior Ministry's St. Petersburg Institute in 1996 with a thesis entitled, "A Russian Constituent Entity: Problems of Power, Law-making and Administration."

He worked as a lecturer and assistant professor while he studied in Petersburg.

The former Secretary-General of the United Russia party, he was a deputy in the State Duma from 1999 until 2011 and from 2016 to present day.

In the Russian legislative election in 1999, he was a candidate of the political bloc Fatherland – All Russia.

After being elected Volodin became deputy chairman of the third State Duma, and from September 2001 he was the head of the Fatherland – All Russia.

In the fourth State Duma he was deputy chairman again and appointed first deputy head of the fraction of the ruling party United Russia which has been founded in 2001.

In 2003, he ran for a seat in the fourth State Duma and was elected as a Deputy from the Balakovo constituency, Saratov Oblast.

Since 2005 he was the party's Secretary-General of its Council Presidium.

In 2007, he was elected to the Russian State Duma in its fifth session.

From 2010 until 2012, he was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia.

He is also a former first deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia.

He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.

Volodin engineered Putin's conservative turn in his third term.

He is part of Putin's inner circle.

Until October 2010, he was once more Deputy Chairman of the Duma.

On 21 October 2010, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister under Dmitry Medvedev.

as well as—after the dismissal of Sergey Sobyanin in connection with his approval to the Mayor of Moscow—Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.

Following the Snow Revolution protests against the outcomes of the 2011 Russian legislative election organized by several persons, including Alexei Navalny, who used Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal blogs to organize the events, Volodin, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time and later became First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia and was responsible for domestic policy, was tasked with countering these efforts and began to rein in the internet using Prisma («Призма») which "actively tracks the social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly conduct, protest sentiments and extremist" by monitoring in real time the protesters discussions on blogs and social networks and performs social media tracking which later led to the establishment of the Internet Research Agency.

Despite the fact that Volodin actively supports Vladimir Putin (for example, he says that "no Putin, no Russia"), many experts talk about his presidential ambitions.

So in 2012, one of his friends in an interview with Reuters said that considers Volodin the future President, as "he has a desire to fly high".

Another close to Volodin man said: "an ordinary person in the afternoon thinking about plans for the evening. Volodin does not think about plans for the evening—he has a plan for life. When he was Vice Mayor of Saratov, he already said to friends that he would become President of Russia."

On 28 April 2014, following the Crimean status referendum, the U.S. Treasury put Volodin on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN), a list of individuals sanctioned as "members of the Russian leadership's inner circle."

The sanctions freeze any assets he holds in the US and ban him from entering the United States.

On 12 May 2014, Volodin was added to the European Union sanctions list due to his role in the 2014 Crimean crisis.

He is barred from entering countries in the EU, and his assets in the EU have been frozen.

Sanctioned by the UK government in 2014 in relation to Russo-Ukrainian War.

In addition, in 2015, the cleric Vsevolod Chaplin, commenting on the article in the Izvestia about the personal life of a number of political figures of Russia, also spoke about the presidential ambitions of Volodin.