Since attaining power eight years ago, his country's economy has gone from strength to strength, as have the living standards of a sizeable chunk of the population. He has acquired cult status. He has begun throwing military shapes, recalling, for some Russians, a time when their country was a force to be reckoned with.

He fulfils the need in the Russian psyche for a strong, disciplined leader. He would eat George Bush for breakfast.

At last week's congress of the United Russia party, he sat on an elevated platform above the speaker's podium, exuding calm and power, as delegates looked up adoringly at him.

Naturally, all the TV stations led their bulletins with the congress. The media is also in love with Putin. Then there is the sex-appeal angle. In August, a photo of the president hiking barechested in Siberia caused a stir across all strata of Russian society.

Putin was entertaining Prince Albert of Monaco on the vacation, and burrowing through the forest of awe for Putin's six-pack, one brave satirist suggested that it was like a scene out of Brokeback Mountain, a recent movie concerning gay cowboys (Albert's sexual orientation has been the subject of gossip for years).

The only cloud on the horizon is that niggardly business of democracy. The Russian constitution allows for two consecutive terms as president, and Putin's second term ends in December.

Few believed that he would go gently into the night of retirement. And last week at the congress, he dropped hints as to his strategy to remain at the helm.

He will run as the United Russia's lead candidate in the parliamentary elections.

This will position him to become prime minister. The current incumbent is 66year-old Victor Zubkov, a close ally whom Putin appointed last month. He will most likely be elevated to president, making him, analysts suggest, Putin's puppet until 2012, when the man himself can run again for the top job. Just like the old Chinese leaders, Putin intends to go on and on, demonstrating that there is more than one way for an old commie to skin a democratic cat.

His biggest domestic achievement has been to retain huge popularity at a time of major upheaval. Through the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin stumbled though market reforms in a manner that created a small number of billionaires . . . the oligarchs . . . and thrust most of the rest of the country towards penury. Putin took the reins in 2000, continuing with harsh market reforms, which ordinarily might be expected to generate at least some opposition. Except in Russia today, opposition is a precarious business.

Ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oligarch who now languishes in a Siberian hellhole serving eight years for tax fraud. His conviction was highly suspicious, and attracted allegations that he was set up.

Unlike his fellow billionaires, Khodorkovsky wanted to use his fortune to fund political parties opposing Putin. Now his money is gone and he is being subjected to the kind of treatment formerly meted out by the Politburo.

The Russian TV stations which shower adoration on Putin are largely owned by oligarchs who would have paid rapt attention to the fate of Khodorkovsky. Other opponents of Putin's regime have fared even worse. Last November in London, Alexander Litvinenko, who formerly worked for the KGB's successor, the FSB, died after radiation poisoning. Litvinenko was a serious critic of Putin's regime, particularly in relation to the restrictions on freedom that had crept into society since Putin assumed power.

The previous month, prominent journalist Anna Politkoyskaya was found shot to death outside her Moscow apartment. She had been renowned for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya, which Putin had used to solidify his hard-man credentials with the Russian people.

There is no evidence to suggest that Putin was behind any of these outrages, but nasty things happen to his opponents, and any hint of the marshalling of opposition is usually met with a sledgehammer of one sort or another. He has fervently embraced the economics of liberal democracy, but there is scant evidence that he feels compelled to observe its corresponding freedoms. In effect, he operates as a tsar with a few democratic bells and whistles thrown in.

Putin was born in Leningrad . . . now reverted to St Petersburg . . . in 1952, the second son of a couple who lost their first during the siege of the city in the second Wo r l d Wa r.

His father was a machine operator and the family lived in a typically Soviet oneroom apartment.

He met his wife in university. They have two daughters. On completing his education, he joined the KGB and served in East Germany for five years. When he returned to Leningrad, he joined the reformist movement, rising to become assistant to the city's mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, a leader of Russia's early democratic movement.

Putin made his mark during the peaceful revolution led by Boris Yeltsin in 1991. He negotiated between the reformists and the KGB in Leningrad to ensure a smooth transition of power. He moved to Moscow in 1996 and another swift ascent followed all the way to the position of Yelstin's righthand man.

By that stage, Yeltsin was sozzled a great deal of the time, and began to rely heavily on his energetic deputy. Putin was the automatic replacement when Boris stepped down in December 1999. Elections the following March ratified the rising star as the new president. One of his first tasks was to grant his predecessor immunity from prosecution for any charges arising out of the activities Yeltsin was involved in during the country's disastrous privatisation binge in the 1990s. By the time reelection came around in 2004, Putin was a shoo-in. Similarly, his popular appeal would ensure his re-election this time around if it wasn't for the constitutional ban.

His popularity at home is not replicated among governments in the West. His apparent disregard for democratic freedoms and his recent military shape-throwing have left western governments wary of his intentions for the region.

He probably couldn't care less. He is king where it matters most. In the eyes of many of his compatriots, he is raising Russia from the ashes of old-style communism to be a power once more in the world. For those who are beginning to prosper on the back of his policies, it is all gravy. For those who are feeling the brunt of the chill winds of market reforms, tough titty, because there is no real voice of opposition.

And for those who are disposed to oppose, the smell of fear may well be enough to show them the error of their ways.