Putin's leadership marked a break with the Soviet-system, in that his political career didn't begin in the USSR. In fact, he'd spent most of the 1980s working as a KGB officer in East Germany.
By the time he quit the service in 1991, he was already working for the liberal mayor of St Petersburg Anatoly Sobchack, where he was responsibile for promoting international relations and foreign investment.
During his first term, Putin was considered a Westerniser and he formed friendly relations with the US and its allies.
He viewed international terrorism as a common threat which not only affected Russia (which in those years suffered from frequent attacks by radical islamic militants) but also impacted the wider world after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York.
Although relations between Russia and the West were quite friendly in the early 2000s, mostly due to Putin’s initially warm personal relationships with his Western counterparts (including US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair), there were still divisive issues. For example, the Russian president was critical of Washington’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, he complained about the expansion of NATO, and expressed regret that while the West said that it was ready for equal dialogue with Moscow, those words weren’t backed by actions, in his view.
Putin’s changing views on international politics, as the decade progressed, were best expressed in his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007. World media described the historic address as his biggest criticism of the US and the West thus far. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, some observers warned that a similar conflict could resume, although at that point, no one seriously believed that it could happen again.