It's his GRU stint that fascinates me ...
An official biography of Putin posted on the Russian National News Service web site in 1997 states that Putin began his career as a GRU military intelligence officer. That information was deleted from subsequent biographies.(6) Finally in 1984 he took a year-long course at the KGB Red Banner Institute of Intelligence (now the Andropov Institute) for training abroad, and was assigned the following year to East Germany, where he remained until 1990.[switching out Soviets with "former Soviets" who walked in on a pile of rubble that was the Wall which fell into the West]
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Vladimir Putin while working in the KGB's foreign intelligence service. |
Speaking at an anniversary ceremony at the headquarters of Russia's military intelligence, the GRU, President Vladimir Putin announced that the role of the agency can be expected to "grow exponentially, not only as a tool of foreign policy but also as an element of military policy and defense," Russia's ORT television reported. In this context, according to Putin, the GRU is an important part of Russian military efforts in the Caucasus, and especially in Chechnya, where 421 officers of the agency have been killed over the past two years.Pootie-poot ping![Editor's Note: Putin's visit to the GRU has great symbolic significance -- although the intelligence organ can trace its roots back to 1810 and the rule of Aleksandr I, it continues to celebrate its founding on the date that Leo Trotsky established its Soviet directive in 1918.]