As a result, Russia's gross domestic product (GDP), a key indicator for economic performance, increased from 260 billion US dollars in 2000 to 1,260 billion dollars last year.
Foreign trade went up from 150 billion dollars in 2000 to 468 billion in 2006, accounting for half of the country's GDP, while foreign investment in Russia has totaled 198 billion dollars as of September 2007.
Russia even paid off all Soviet-era debts and accumulated the world's third largest monetary reserves.
Analysts, however, believe that a big stake of the oil-gas-rich country's growth lays on the surging oil price, which quintupled from some 20 dollars per barrel to around 100 dollars during his two terms as president.
Russia, the world's No. 1 gas exporter and No. 2 oil producer, is feeding one quarter of European gas markets and is still expanding its gas and oil pipelines network into the European and the Asia-Pacific region. It's even mulling to set up a gas OPEC, which has sparked concerns from major energy buyers such as Europe and the United States.
Backed by powerful economic might, Putin felt confident to flex Russia's military muscle and readjusted its foreign policy and began to play tough with the West.
The wars in Chechnya and the sinking of Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in 2000 triggered Putin's military reform, which is marked by improvement of command system, troops structure, re-equipment and development of advanced weapons such as new types of submarine, missile, fighter jet and aircraft carrier.
Russia's military expenditure increased at an average rate of 30 percent since 2000 and will be quadrupled to 959 billion rubbles (some 39 billion US dollars) in 2008, accounting for some 16 percent of the national GDP, official figures showed.
On August 17, 2007, Putin announced that Russia would resume its strategic bombers' long-range patrols over oceans, a rare step taken after the Cold War. Later that year, Russia suspended its obligation in an arms control treaty, the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), to get a much louder "NO" across to the West, typically on US plans to deploy a missile shield in Central Europe.
