Editing Vladimir Putin (section)

== Intelligence career ==
{{Main|Intelligence career of Vladimir Putin}}
[[File:Vladimir Putin in KGB uniform.jpg|thumb|upright=.7|Putin in the [[KGB]], {{circa|1980}}]]
In 1975, Putin joined the [[KGB]] and trained at the 401st KGB School in Okhta, [[Leningrad Oblast|Leningrad]].<ref name="stp">{{#invoke:cite|web|title = When Was St. Petersburg Known as Petrograd and Leningrad? |url = http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/fl/When-Was-St-Petersburg-Known-as-Petrograd-and-Leningrad.htm |publisher = About.com |first = Matt |last = Rosenberg |date = 12 August 2016 |access-date = 16 September 2016 |archive-date = 5 February 2017 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170205031730/http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/fl/When-Was-St-Petersburg-Known-as-Petrograd-and-Leningrad.htm |url-status = dead }}</ref> After training, he worked in the Second Chief Directorate ([[counterintelligence]]), before he was transferred to the [[First Chief Directorate]], where he monitored foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad.<ref name="stp" /><ref>{{harv|Sakwa|2008|pp=8–9}}</ref><ref name="hoffman">{{#invoke:cite|news|first = David |last = Hoffman |date = 30 January 2000 |url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/russiagov/putin.htm |title = Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB |newspaper = The Washington Post |access-date = 23 May 2021 |archive-date = 23 June 2019 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190623173752/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/russiagov/putin.htm |url-status = live }}</ref> In September 1984, Putin was sent to Moscow for further training at the [[Academy of Foreign Intelligence|Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute]].<ref name="Hutchins2012">{{cite book |author=Chris Hutchins |title=Putin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4kqWFqR0MPwC&pg=PA40 |year=2012 |publisher=Troubador Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-1-78088-114-0 |page=40 |quote=But these were the honeymoon days and she was already expecting their first child when he was sent to Moscow for further training at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute in September 1984 ... At Red Banner, students were given a nom de guerre beginning with the same letter as their surname. Thus Comrade Putin became Comrade Platov. |access-date=19 January 2019 |archive-date=11 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231111195808/https://books.google.com/books?id=4kqWFqR0MPwC&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Jack2005">{{cite book |author=Andrew Jack |title=Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform without Democracy? |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OPdcCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT66 |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-029336-9 |page=66 |quote=He returned to work in Leningrad's First Department for intelligence for four and a half years, and then attended the elite Andropov Red Banner Institute for intelligence training before his posting to the German Democratic Republic in 1985. |access-date=19 January 2019 |archive-date=11 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231111195809/https://books.google.com/books?id=OPdcCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT66#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="PutinGevorkyan2000">{{cite book |author1=Vladimir Putin |author2=Nataliya Gevorkyan |author3=Natalya Timakova |author4=Andrei Kolesnikov |title=First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gcDv5Qww_2AC&pg=PA53 |date=2000 |publisher=Public Affairs |isbn=978-0-7867-2327-0 |page=53 |quote=I worked there for about four and a half years, and then I went to Moscow for training at the Andropov Red Banner Institute, which is now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence. |access-date=19 January 2019 |archive-date=11 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231111195814/https://books.google.com/books?id=gcDv5Qww_2AC&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref>

From 1985 to 1990, he served in [[Dresden]], [[East Germany]],<ref>{{#invoke:cite|web|date = 9 October 2006 |title = Putin set to visit Dresden, the place of his work as a KGB spy, to tend relations with Germany |url = http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/09/europe/EU_GEN_Germany_Russia.php |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090326123503/http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/09/europe/EU_GEN_Germany_Russia.php |archive-date = 26 March 2009 |website = International Herald Tribune }}</ref> using a [[cover identity]] as a translator.<ref name="M. Gessen p. 60">{{Cite web |url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-57-no-4/the-man-without-a-face-the-unlikely-rise-of-vladimir-putin-and-mr-putin-operative-in-the-kremlin.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140727161603/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-57-no-4/the-man-without-a-face-the-unlikely-rise-of-vladimir-putin-and-mr-putin-operative-in-the-kremlin.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=27 July 2014 |title=The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin — Central Intelligence Agency |website=www.cia.gov |language=en |access-date=23 October 2020}}</ref> While posted in Dresden, Putin worked as one of the KGB's liaison officers to the [[Stasi]] secret police and was reportedly promoted to [[lieutenant colonel]]. According to the official Kremlin presidential site, the East German [[Communist Regime|communist regime]] commended Putin with a bronze medal for "faithful service to the [[National People's Army]]". Putin has publicly conveyed delight over his activities in Dresden, once recounting his confrontations with [[Peaceful Revolution|anti-communist protestors of 1989]] who attempted the [[Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstrasse#Occupation of the Stasi headquarters and prison|occupation of Stasi buildings]] in the city.<ref>{{#invoke:cite|web|date=11 December 2018 |title=Putin's Stasi spy ID pass found in Germany |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46525543 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220324084844/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46525543 |archive-date=24 March 2022 |access-date=8 April 2023 |website=[[BBC News]] }}</ref>

"Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting [[press clippings]], thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB", Russian-American [[Masha Gessen]] wrote in their 2012 biography of Putin.<ref name="M. Gessen p. 60" /> His work was also downplayed by former [[Stasi]] spy chief [[Markus Wolf]] and Putin's former KGB colleague Vladimir Usoltsev. Journalist [[Catherine Belton]] wrote in 2020 that this downplaying was actually cover for Putin's involvement in KGB coordination and support for the terrorist [[Red Army Faction]], whose members frequently hid in East Germany with the support of the Stasi. Dresden was preferred as a "marginal" town with only a small presence of Western intelligence services.<ref name="politico1">{{#invoke:cite|news|last = Belton |first = Catherine |author-link = Catherine Belton |title = Did Vladimir Putin Support Anti-Western Terrorists as a Young KGB Officer? |url = https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/20/vladimir-putin-dresden-kgb-330203 |work = Politico |year = 2020 |access-date = 30 June 2020 |archive-date = 12 February 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220212021450/https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/20/vladimir-putin-dresden-kgb-330203 |url-status = live }}</ref> According to an anonymous source who claimed to be a former RAF member, at one of these meetings in Dresden the militants presented Putin with a list of weapons that were later delivered to the RAF in West Germany. Klaus Zuchold, who claimed to be recruited by Putin, said that Putin handled a [[neo-Nazi]], Rainer Sonntag, and attempted to recruit an author of a study on poisons.<ref name="politico1" /> Putin reportedly met Germans to be recruited for wireless communications affairs together with an interpreter. He was involved in wireless communications technologies in South-East Asia due to trips of German engineers, recruited by him, there and to the West.<ref name="hoffman" /> However, a 2023 investigation by ''[[Der Spiegel]]'' reported that the anonymous source had never been an RAF member and is "considered a notorious fabulist" with "several previous convictions, including for making false statements".<ref>{{#invoke:cite|web|date=7 June 2023|title=Were Vladimir Putin's Years in Germany Less Thrilling than the Stories?|url=https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/were-vladimir-putin-s-years-in-germany-less-thrilling-than-the-stories-a-178de140-b799-472d-83bc-5e3b1adf65b2|author-last=Röbel|author-first=Sven|access-date=3 June 2023|work=Der Spiegel|archive-date=7 June 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230607092338/https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/were-vladimir-putin-s-years-in-germany-less-thrilling-than-the-stories-a-178de140-b799-472d-83bc-5e3b1adf65b2|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png|thumb|The Stasi identity card of Vladimir Putin, who worked in Dresden as a KGB liaison officer to the Stasi<ref>{{#invoke:cite|news|title=Putin's Stasi spy ID pass found in Germany |work=[[BBC News]] |date=11 December 2018 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46525543 |access-date=8 April 2023 |archive-date=24 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220324084844/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46525543 |url-status=live }}</ref>]]
According to Putin's official biography, during the [[fall of the Berlin Wall]] that began on 9 November 1989, he saved the files of the Soviet Cultural Center (House of Friendship) and of the KGB villa in Dresden for the official authorities of the would-be united Germany to prevent demonstrators, including KGB and Stasi agents, from obtaining and destroying them. He then supposedly burnt only the KGB files, in a few hours, but saved the archives of the Soviet Cultural Center for the German authorities. Nothing is told about the selection criteria during this burning; for example, concerning Stasi files or about files of other agencies of the German Democratic Republic or of the USSR. He explained that many documents were left to Germany only because the furnace burst but many documents of the KGB villa were sent to Moscow.<ref>{{#invoke:cite|news|url = http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-runner-up-vladimir-putin/ |title = Vladimir Putin, The Imperialist |magazine = [[Time (magazine)|Time]] |access-date = 11 December 2014 |date = 10 December 2014 |archive-date = 1 March 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220301153733/https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-runner-up-vladimir-putin/ |url-status = live }}</ref>

After the [[Die Wende|collapse of the Communist East German government]], Putin was to resign from active KGB service because of suspicions aroused regarding his loyalty during demonstrations in Dresden and earlier, although the KGB and the [[Soviet Army]] still operated in eastern Germany. He returned to Leningrad in early 1990 as a member of the "active reserves", where he worked for about three months with the International Affairs section of [[Saint Petersburg State University|Leningrad State University]], reporting to Vice-Rector [[Yuriy Molchanov]], while working on his doctoral dissertation.<ref name="hoffman" />

There, he looked for new KGB recruits, watched the student body, and renewed his friendship with his former professor, [[Anatoly Sobchak]], soon to be the [[Governor of Saint Petersburg|Mayor of Leningrad]].<ref name="R. Sakwa p. 10">{{cite book |last=Sakwa |first=Richard |title=Putin : Russia's Choice |year=2007 |publisher=Routledge |location=Abingdon, Oxon |isbn=978-0-415-40765-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DJcixDNh_m4C |edition=2nd |access-date=11 June 2012 |page=10 |archive-date=11 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231111195816/https://books.google.com/books?id=DJcixDNh_m4C |url-status=live}}</ref> Putin said that he resigned with the rank of lieutenant colonel on 20 August 1991,<ref name="R. Sakwa p. 10" /> on the second day of the [[1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt]] against Soviet president [[Mikhail Gorbachev]].<ref>{{harv|Sakwa|2008|pp=10–11}}</ref> Putin stated: "As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on", although he said that the choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with "the organs".<ref>{{harv|Sakwa|2008|p=11}}</ref>