Posted on 03/05/2014 5:55:48 PM PST by smoothsailing
Written by Alex Selwyn-Holmes
December 7, 2009
In May 1988, President Ronald Reagan travelled to Moscow for his 4th summit with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviets prepared a grand welcome; buildings across from the Kremlin were repainted, streets repaved and trees and flowers planted along the boulevards. The president’s schedule included attending the Bolshoi Ballet, speaking to students at Moscow’s State University and visiting Danilov Monastery, while First Lady would tour Leningrad.
The visit was not without its own share of diplomatic incidents. The First Couple took an unscheduled walk through the Arbat, a Moscow shopping pedestrian street, when security police rushed in and roughed up a throng of onlookers, including children. “It’s still a police state,” Reagan was heard to say. When the president’s advance team asked the Russian Orthodox Church to pave the way to the Danilov Monastery so that the president could arrive in the limousine, a clergyman retorted that “One does not ride to see God. One walks either upon his feet or upon his knees.” Because he wore no ID badge, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was pursued by security personnel on his way to a Kremlin dinner. The president dozed off during the performance at the Bolshoi and Secretary Gorbachev had to wake him with a tap on the shoulder as the curtains were coming down.
The most telling incident was only revealed 20 years later. In the above photo, the man with the camera around his neck standing behind the boy was the current Russian Prime Minister (and former president) Vladimir Putin. He was pretending to be a tourist on his capacity as a KGB agent. On that day, on the Red Square, Gorbachev introduced Reagan to various tourists, who asked the American president pointed questions about subjects such as human rights in the United States. The photographer of this picture, Pete Souza, turned to the Secret Service and commented, “I can’t believe these tourists in the Soviet Union are asking these pointed questions.” The agent replied, “Oh, these are all KGB families.”
Pete Souza is the official chief White House photographer for Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama administrations. The Kremlin, however, had denied that it was Putin.
Another version puts it this way:
“An apparently younger looking Putin is dressed as a tourist in this photo below, taken in 1988 at Red Square. At the time the Reagan administrations relationship with Russia was warming as the US courted the leadership of what nobody would have thought at the time would soon become the former USSR.”
http://newsbizarre.com/2009/03/picture-vladimir-putin-meets-ronald.html
Nobody but Reagan, that is.
In the above photo, the man with the camera around his neck standing behind the boy was the current Russian Prime Minister (and former president) Vladimir Putin.
LOL, Putin is the guy with the camera standing behind the kid. Putin was 36 at the time the picture was taken. B^)
That pic was taken in 1988 and the boy looks to be 11 or 12 years old. In 2008 he’d have been 20 years older, 31 or 32. Add another 6 years and that makes him 37 or 38, a lot younger than Putin.
Also, he’s not wearing a belt on his trousers. Quite plausible these aren’t his regular clothes - KGB went shopping at The Gap and forgot to get belts.
He's got a pen!
(Wonder if O-mama knows...)
I re read the article and apparently it is the man with the camera who is said to be putin.
form the looks him in that photo I cannot make a postivie ID.
LMAO! Yeah, Putin is extremely “Russian” looking. I bet he could find a 100 body doubles just in New York.
A stoic character.
There’s a critical vacuum of leadership in the United States.
And a phone! Uh-Oh.
yes...and I cant really tell from that version of the photo.
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Well that settles it. He has all it takes to be, um, _resident...
Different person IMO.
You gotta be kidding. That is definitely Ronald Reagan!
the angle ...i.e. perpective of the fae in that photo makes it difficult to tell
the build is about right...the nose....not likely .
if that had been shot with one of todays high resolution cameras it would have made it a lot easier to “read”
Oh yeah? And who is this?
That’s my barber!
Putin is (in terms used in Cleveland in my youth) a “Slavic slopehead”
Camera guy has a lot of hair, but his skull looks more vertical. Perspective may vary though...
Even accounting for the pin-cushion distortion effect of the camera, the general aspect of the jaw and chin with respect to the nose makes it very questionable, IMO.
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