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Putin was ‘conscientious and disciplined’ spy: KGB documents
SAINT PETERSBURG, Oct 31, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Declassified KGB documents on
display in Russia describe future President Vladimir Putin as a
“conscientious and disciplined” spy at the start of his career.
“Comrade Putin… is constantly raising his ideological, political and
professional level,” said the one-page document released to Russian media,
written while the intelligence agent turned politician was in his 20s.
Now 67, Putin worked for the secret service from the mid-1970s and was
posted in Dresden, then East Germany, from 1985 to 1990, as Soviet power was
crumbling.
In the Kremlin he has surrounded himself with many former employees of the
secret service and the FSB, the successor to the KGB, remains a powerful
agency.
The KGB profile is part of an exhibition at the Central Archive of
Historical and Political Documents in Russia’s second city of Saint
Petersburg, featuring other declassified files.
The young Putin also received “congratulations from his seniors” in the
organisation “for his well organised work and results,” the document said.
In 2016, Putin — who has been in power as president or prime minister for
two decades — revealed he had kept his USSR Communist Party membership card
for sentimental reasons.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1922HRS