An old East German secret policy identity card has been found in the Stasi archives which is related to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The membership card was issued to “Maj Vladimir Putin”, which was signed and validated with the stamps until the end of the year 1989.
According to news reports, “Maj Vladimir Putin” card was discovered in Dresden in soviet-era personnel files, where it has indicated that Putin had served as a KGB officer in the earlies 1980, along with an image of the identification card.
The archive head said that the identity card would have always let Putin enter the Stasi offices without any restrictions and also made it much easier to recruit the agents, because Putin wouldn’t have had to remark his KGB affiliation. Though, it is still unclear whether the identity card indicated that Putin had worked directly for the Stasi.
Head of Dresden branch Konrad Felber said Putin’s identity card would have always allowed him to enter and accordingly leave the spy agency’s office.
However, the Kremlin also neither denied nor confirmed over the issuing of a Stasi identifications to Putin. A Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “At those times, the times of the USSR, the KGB and the Stasi were partner services, and so such an exchange of IDs should perhaps not be ruled out.”
According to news reports, most of the Russian leader’s formative years has been spent in Dresden – details of which still remains secret. Over his first foreign posting with the KGB, Putin had, at mid-1980s, arrived in German city.
On December 5, 1989, Putin called Russia for the orders as the crowds had prepared to tough storm the KGB residence. Less than a month, that time, the Berlin Wall had fallen.
According to the news report, Putin’s recent biography stated that he was told, “Moscow is silent.”
According to the Stasi archives, it has shown that some other prominent Russian officials had also served in Dresden along Putin, such as the transneft head Nikolay Tokarev and Sergey Chemezov, the chief of defence manufacturer rostec.