MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin was hailed a 'tsar' on his 72nd birthday on Monday by some supporters who said the former KGB spy had raised Russia up from its knees and would deliver victory against the West in the Ukraine war. Putin, who took the Kremlin's top job just eight years after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, is the longest serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin who died at his dacha outside Moscow in 1953 aged 74. Cast by Western leaders as an autocrat, killer and war criminal, Putin has seen his popularity rise inside Russia since he ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, according to Russian opinion polls.