Russian president Vladimir Putin was a “mediocre” KGB agent, according to his former boss at the sinister Soviet spy agency. Retired general Nikolai Leonov says Putin was sent to an unimportant posting in East Germany after he was recruited as a spy.
Leonov was in the KGB from 1956 to 1991 and was the number two in the dreaded Soviet secret service when Putin served in Dresden between 1985 and 1990. He told Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo: “When we had a cadet fluent in German, as was Putin’s case, if he was good he would go to West Germany or Austria.”
“But he went to the eastern side, which was communist.”
He added that a promising officers would be sent to Berlin to work with the Stasi – the secret police of the East German regime – not Dresden. Leonov, a former Latin America expert for Soviet Russia, also claims Putin was often late for appointments – a habit that was “strange and scandalous” to KGB officers.
Putin admits he was in a “minor position” in the KGB but Russian state media often claims he bravely defended the Soviet Union, even threatening an angry crowd with a gun to stop them from ransacking the spy agency’s offices after the collapse of the USSR.
Leonov, 88, told the newspaper that he is pessimistic about Russia’s future under Putin and thinks that the Russian strongman is not as secure in power as most people believe because he is dominated by the powerful oligarchies.
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Above: retired KGB-officer Nikolai Leonov is a frequent guest on Cuban TV where he and Raul fondly reminisce (we imagine) about the monkeys they made of the CIA, especially (we imagine) CIA officer Robert D. Chapman who was assigned to the area where Raul Castro operated.
“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except (Republican) ambassador Earl Smith.” (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba 1957’59, Robert Weicha.)
“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel 1958.)
Nikolai Leonov’s history as the Castro brothers’ and Che Guevara’s case officer thoroughly documented in these internationally-acclaimed books.
Mediocre people who rise too high not infrequently wind up trying too hard to prove they deserve their position, both to themselves and to others, which is inevitably futile but can also do a lot of harm.