Sky2 is a British television channel originally launched on 2 December 2002 as Sky One Mix. Sky2 is now available on Sky, Virgin Media, Smallworld Cable and TalkTalk TV platforms in the UK. It is also available in the Ireland on the UPC Ireland platform.

Sky 2 was originally a television channel from British Sky Broadcasting, which launched on 1 September 1996 as a sister channel to Sky One, as part of a new bouquet of Sky channels including The Computer Channel and Sky Scottish. For an opening night it held an X-Files theme night. While the channel was still being broadcast, Sky One was branded as "Sky 1". Unlike the later Sky One spin-off, Sky One Mix, the channel showed exclusive first-run television shows rather than the same programming as its parent. Prominent shows on its schedule included Xena: Warrior Princess, Profit, TekWar and Melrose Place.

Sky used the launch of the channel and the rebrand of Sky 1 to introduce Digital On-screen Graphics, on both channels.

While at some points the channel reached viewing figures nearly equal to that of its sister channel (such as for the initial episode of Xena), it was never very successful.^{[citation needed]} It has eventually closed on 1 September 1997.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин; IPA: [vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪr vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ˈputʲɪn] ( listen); born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician who has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012. Putin previously served as President from 2000 to 2008 and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012. Putin also serves as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when president Boris Yeltsin resigned in a surprising move. Putin won the 2000 presidential election; in 2004 he was re-elected for a second term lasting until 7 May 2008.

Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term. After his successor Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election, Putin was nominated by Medvedev to be Russia's Prime Minister; Putin took office on 8 May 2008 and a period of so-called "tandemocracy" followed. In September 2011, Putin and Medvedev agreed he should seek a third, non-consecutive term in the 2012 presidential election, which he won in the first round on 4 March 2012.