118 of 365 : Vladimir Putin

So this guy was a president of Russia.
Before being a president, he was an intelligence officer in the KGB stationed mainly in Germany.
Then he retired as a colonel, and returned to Leningrad.
He was a supporter for Anatoly Sobchak, so after Sobchak won election, Putin became his head of external relations, and then his first deputy mayor.
After Sobchak defeated, Putin resigned and returned to Moscow. He was appointed as head of management under Boris Yeltsin's presidential administration. There, he was in-charge of Kremlin's relations with regional governments.
Then, Putin was appointed as head of Federal Security, as well as head of Yeltsin's Security Council. Then, Yeltsin appointed Putin to be then-prime minister replacing Sergey Stapashin.

In September 2001, he announced Russia's stance as a US ally. Soon, he announced his opposition  - along with French and Germany governments - to the US "war on terror", which focused on ridding Iraq.

In December 2012, Putin signed into a law banning on the US adoption of Russian child.

Putin strained the relationship with US by granting an asylum to Edward Snowden who was a wanted person by US because of leaking classified information about the National Security Agency case.

Putin established an anti-gay laws. He made it illegal for gay couple to adopt kids and placed a ban on propagandizing "nontraditional" sexual relationship to minors.

In September 2013, due to cooperation of Russia and China, amongst other nations, US would refrain from attacking Syria and come up with an agreement to get Syria to release its chemical weapon. In hi op-ed in New York Times, he stated that  by US striking Syria, despite the disapproval of several other nations, could result in violence and unrest in the Middle East  potentially escalating.