Vladimir Putin was never the Soviet super spy he'd like us to believe. He was merely a KGB 'errand boy,' report says

Business Insider ^ | 6/4/2023 | Nathan Rennolds

[marcusmaximus]

Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely never the elite Soviet spy that the world has been led to believe, an investigaton by the German news outlet Der Spiegel has revealed.

-snip-

according to Der Spiegel's report, the majority of Putin's work was actually limited to "banal" administrative tasks.

Citing one of Putin's former colleagues at the KGB's Dresden office, it says his "work consisted primarily of endlessly reviewing applications for West German relatives' visits or searching for potential informants among foreign students at Dresden University."

The report says that Putin is rarely mentioned in Stasi — the name of the East German secret police — records. In those that do reference him, it is only in regards to things like his birthday or administrative tasks, none provide evidence to back up the stories mentioned previously.

Horst Jehmlich, a former Stasi officer who also worked in Dresden, told Der Spiegel that Putin was nothing more than an "errand boy."

[marcusmaximus]

LOL!

[McGruff]

Ukraine can’t win the war so they resort to trying to win the propaganda war. But some buy it.

[marcusmaximus]

I miss Rush.

[Pelham]

Putin recruited and ran spies when he was stationed in East Germany. That seems to be how he was involved in the spook world.

Here’s a WaPo piece from 2000 that offers some background on him:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/russiagov/putin.htm

[popdonnelly]

I believe it.

[popdonnelly]

Punctuation is our friend.

[CatHerd]

Yes, he did typical KGB bureaucrat stuff, recruited agents, ran spies, invented cover stories, all apparently pretty basic stuff. No super spy stuff. No exciting John le Carré type stuff.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Eichmann was a desk jockey too… didn’t seem to hinder his ability to cause harm.