An unprecedented video recording from the early 1990s shows Vladimir Putin with a strange appearance, wearing a tracksuit and having longer hair, during a visit to Finland, reports The Guardian newspaper on Sunday, quoted by News.ro.
Vladimir Putin in the early 90sPhoto: Video capture yle.fi
Finnish television YLE obtained this original film made by an amateur from an anonymous source. The video was filmed on May 1, shortly after Putin – then a 40-year-old KGB officer – became an adviser to Anatoli Sobceak, the mayor of St. Petersburg at the time.
In the video, Putin and Sobceak play table tennis with the mayor’s bodyguards. At one point, Putin smiles. He scratches his neck repeatedly.
Afterwards, the party continues fishing. Putin, apparently aware that he is being filmed, sits with his back to the camera, while someone from the shore shouts to show the caught fish.
On the way back, Putin’s wife at the time, Liudmila, is seen gutting the catch, a pike. Their two daughters, Maria and Katerina, are also seen around.
The footage also shows Putin, eyes downcast, standing next to Sobceak as the mayor tries his hand at darts.
The film was shot at a guest villa owned by a Finnish company, Thomesto, which imported wood from Russia. The wooden villa is located on the island of Torsö in Raseborg, about 100 kilometers west of Helsinki on the southern coast of Finland.
Putin returned to Leningrad – now Saint Petersburg – in 1990 after spending five years as a KGB intelligence officer in the East German city of Dresden. He joined Sobceak’s team and became head of the Foreign Relations Committee, responsible for trade agreements and foreign investment. The first accusations of corruption against Putin date from this period, states The Guardian.
Putin claims he resigned from the KGB in August 1991 in protest of his failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. According to the YLE source, Putin confirmed that he was working for the spy agency during the visit.
The source described Liudmila Putina as “very pleasant”. The person added: “You couldn’t get close to Putin, like you could have a drink together and talk about women and life – nothing like that. He was very strict about alcohol and he didn’t smoke.”
The video shows the group having a relaxed lunch of beer and wine inside a log cabin. Sobceak sits at the head of the table, and Putin can be seen chewing well. When the mayor is served a large piece of meat, Putin makes a joke about the market economy – recently introduced in Russia after the fall of communism.
According to the YLE source, Putin spoke very little in the villa in Raseborg. He asked only one question: what would happen if “one and a half million Russians” crossed the border into Finland? At that time, Russians were suffering from an acute crisis of food and basic goods.
In the 1990s, Putin was a frequent visitor to Finland. His subsequent appearances as prime minister and president of Russia were carefully controlled.
YLE comments that the video is “far from the macho and dictatorial image that Putin has created for himself since then”.
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