The Putin Files

Vladimir Putin's Early Life

Putin’s childhood in St. Petersburg was rife with hardship, but he learned to become a wily street fighter and scrappy underdog. His ambition was rewarded with admission to the Soviet intelligence services as a KGB official. In Dresden, East Germany he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, Putin and 800,000 KGB officers were left shipwrecked.
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“He imagined he himself, he with his very hands, could restore Russian dignity. At that moment, there he is, shredding documents in Dresden.”

Evan Osnos

The New Yorker

“We viewed 1991 as the end and the beginning, and the transition from this to that. I think in the way that Putin thinks, it was just a pause...”

Molly McKew

Adviser to former president of Georgia

“For the majority of Russians, he was just a guy who came from nowhere and who showed himself being strong...”

Tikhon Dzyadko

Russian journalist

“The KGB office sent me a letter, and they explained to me what I should be doing to get a job in the KGB. So for Putin and for myself, we are people of the same generation.”

Gennady Gudkov

Opposition politician

“He has wanted to be a secret agent all of his life, as long as he can remember...”

Masha Gessen

Author, "The Man Without a Face"

“One of his great life lessons is never show weakness because the weak are always defeated.”

David Hoffman

The Washington Post

“The KGB's men, they were all suspicious. They were suspicious of everybody. Every person could be suspicious and [could] harm the Soviet state. I think that Putin still bears all those features...”

Irina Borogan

Co-author, "The Red Web"

“That's the moment when central authority becomes untethered for Vladimir Putin, and it's scary, and it’s uncertain, and he seems to want to restore the authority of the center for evermore...”

Susan Glasser

Co-author, "Kremlin Rising"

“Soviet influence is collapsing before his eyes, and he calls home; he radios home, and home isn't there.”

Julia Ioffe

The Atlantic

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