SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was not a tsar, saying he had been elected by the Russian people to serve a certain term in office.

Putin, a former KGB officer who rose to power in 1999, was asked by a moderator at a conference in southern Russia if he felt like Russia’s Tsar Alexander I, who negotiated the Congress of Vienna after the French Revolutionary Wars.

“No, I do not feel like that. Alexander I was an emperor. I am a president elected by the people for a certain term,” he said.

After Putin was appointed as acting president by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, he won the 2000 presidential election and was re-elected in 2004.

In 2008, his protege Dmitry Medvedev was elected president and Putin served as prime minister befor

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