LONDON — Vladimir V. Putin’s time as a Soviet intelligence agent in East Germany is largely shrouded in secrecy. He has claimed, for example, to have single-handedly dispersed protesters outside the KGB office in Dresden in 1989, in the waning days of the Communist government.
Now, German tabloid Bild’s publication of a photo ID card issued to a young Putin by the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, pulls back the veil on one part of his tenure in Dresden, causing a ripple of excitement on social media and raising questions about his presence in the former German Democratic Republic.
The Putin ID card was also released Wednesday by the federal commissioner for the records of the state security service of the former East Germany. Printed on green passport-style paper, the card bears a black-and-white photo of a young intelligence officer identified as Major Putin, who would have been 33 at the time.
It was issued on the last day of 1985, and has validation stamps for each quarter except one — the last quarter of 1986. The ID also bears what appears to be Putin’s signature.
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The Stasi building was a stone’s throw away from the villa where the KGB had its offices.
“This is no proof that he worked for the Stasi,” Douglas Selvage, who works for the Stasi archives, said by phone Wednesday.
What the ID proves, said Selvage, who is an expert on the relations between the KGB and the Stasi, is that Putin, like other officers of the Soviet security agency, had access to the Stasi’s headquarters in Dresden, most likely for recruiting locals for his intelligence work.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dimitri S. Peskov, said Tuesday, “My guess is that in the Soviet era, the KGB and the Stasi were partners, and for this reason one should not rule out they might have exchanged identification papers and passes.”
Unlike in other intelligence services, where information is compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis, KGB officers could gain access to most of the Stasi’s intelligence. Soviet agents had similar access to intelligence throughout the Warsaw Pact nations, Selvage said.
He said that researchers had found similar IDs in files from other districts of the former East Germany, and sometimes even passport photos — identified only with the words “friend” or “KGB” on the back.
The Stasi archive has released photos and documents relating to Putin’s time in Germany several times. But after a request in November by Bild, archivists took a closer look at the personnel files of KGB officers in Dresden, and found the ID, which had never been released, Dagmar Hovestädt, spokeswoman for the Stasi archive, said by phone Wednesday.
“Every year there are hundreds of requests to see the Stasi records on Putin,” Selvage added, but little is known about his work.
The KGB archives pertaining to Putin’s years in service are still secret, and few relevant records have been discovered in the Stasi archive. The KGB existed until 1991, and was succeeded by the FSB as Russia’s main domestic security agency.