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What does an old video reveal about an old spy and future authoritarian leader?

I recently reviewed recordings of an interview I had with Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the Kremlin on October 13, 2003.

I’d been approached by Putin’s people in Moscow to arrange an unusual interview:  In his first term as President, Putin wanted to reach out to television viewers in Asia to help establish Russia as an Asian as well as a European power.

As head of news for the Star TV network, then owned by Rupert Murdoch, we offered considerable attractions to the Russians. We had a strong Indian channel and a substantial investment in a Chinese-language channel. Putin could reach tens of millions of Hindi, English, and Chinese speaking viewers and sacrifice only an hour of his time.  

So, in an ornate room in the Kremlin decorated with Czarist-era paintings, our little troika—Ajay Kumar from India, Anthony Yuen from China and I—sat before the Russian President. 

Back then, Putin was not seen as a real threat to the post-Soviet world order, a man who The Economist described recently as an autocrat “in a hurry to establish his legacy by renewing Russia’s sphere of influence.” This was a time long before Putin sent troops into Georgia and Ukraine. 

The video reveals a relaxed, clear-skinned, youthful countenance. Vladimir Vladimirovich had just marked his 52nd birthday the week before.  

After his firm handshake and engaging smile, I stooped slightly to appear less imposing. I felt I was towering over his thin, five-foot six-inch frame.

When I lived in Moscow from 1988 through 1991, I knew little of Putin, although I had met his mentor in Leningrad. Anatoly Sobchak ran the city council before becoming the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg when it reverted to its pre-revolutionary name. Putin credits Sobchak as bringing him into politics.  Sobchak said that in Vladimir Vladimirovich, he saw a quick learner and a much-needed right-hand man.  

(​Putin and Sobchak were both embroiled in corruption allegations and investigations during their terms there, but it would be a long time before he gained a reputation for presiding over a kleptocracy.) 

Before flying to Moscow to meet Putin, I read the only book then available on the new Russian leader: First Person: An Astonishing Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President,  the English title proclaimed.

“Astonishing Frank” was a stretch, although the book provided some fascinating insights into Putin’s early years. Published in 2000, First Person compiled dozens of interviews with Moscow reporters and anecdotes from Putin’s family and close friends.

Several chapters of the book were devoted to the president’s childhood dream of one day being a spy.

“Volodya” as Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is referred to throughout, decided he wanted to join the KGB at age 17.

“I went to the office of the KGB directorate,” Volodya recalled. “A guy came out and I told him I wanted a job.”

The “guy” turned down Putin’s request, but suggested the young, would-be spy get an education. A law degree would be useful, he said.

“My notion of the KGB,” Putin noted, “came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education.”

Four years later, in 1975, with a law degree on his wall, 24-year-old Volodya joined the KGB, receiving initial training at Moscow’s Andropov Red Banner Institute, followed by assignments in the agency secretariat and the counterintelligence division. His most challenging assignment came in 1985, when he was posted to East Berlin, in the final years of the communist German Democratic Republic. 

Putin describes how, when East Germany collapsed and the Berlin wall fell in 1989, he set to work frantically burning sensitive documents.  All of the KGB’s counterintelligence contacts, assets and, secret papers were at risk.

“I personally burned a huge amount,” he recalled.  “So much stuff that the furnace burst!” 

Putin is alternatively proud and dismissive of his KGB past.  He quotes Henry Kissinger, whom he first met in St. Petersburg in 1991, as telling him, “all decent leaders got their start in intelligence.” 

When I met Putin at the Kremlin in 2003, he took me by surprise.   

I knew the menacing KGB mainly through “Karla,” George Smiley’s implacable foe. I’d grown up in an era where we hid under our school desks in rather silly rehearsals for a Soviet nuclear strike. I had been indoctrinated by American propaganda to fear the Soviet Union.  

Primed as I was, I expected this former KGB agent to be a stern, shifty eyed, chills-up-the-spine, cold-war spy.  

What I found was an oddly shy man, with an impish smile at times, who was well briefed, quietly spoken, and deliberate in his answers to reporters’ questions.

We asked Putin about Afghanistan. Just two years earlier, following the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Taliban had finally been ousted by the CIA-backed Northern Alliance, which Moscow also supported. But Putin told us he was worried about Pakistani support for the remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. During the Soviets’ nine year occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Red Army had been bled dry by the mujahideen, covertly aided by the U.S. and Pakistan.  

"This is no idle talk. We are well aware of the situation in southern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan.” Putin told us. “This region historically has been out of the control of any authority, but we expect the authorities in Pakistan will do their utmost to stop any weapons from finding their way into the hands of terrorists.” 

Putin was no doubt aware that such a droll comment, broadcast on Star TV’s Indian outlet, would be particularly annoying to the government in Islamabad.

On China, Putin provided a glimpse into the future. He told us Russia had a “new interest” in developing its relations with China.

“I see promising directions especially in hi-tech, aerospace, space technologies and rocket engineering," he said.

In the years since, Russia and China have indeed grown closer, especially after Moscow’s invasion of Crimea and deterioration of relations with the West.

Then, turning to Anthony Yuen and me, Putin smiled broadly and added, “We want strong relations with Beijing, but as you know doing business with China can be complicated.” Anthony replied with a knowing laugh.  

After the cameras had been turned off, I reflected on the man I’d just met.  I saw a leader who did not suffer fools lightly. And he seemed to be a particularly tough taskmaster to his staff, who were scurrying around after him at an impressive speed. In my years in the old Soviet Union, I had seldom seen Russian bureaucrats move at a rush. 

He also appeared to be a man motivated mostly by the need for Russia to regain a position of prestige in the world.  As has been often said in recent years, he had always been haunted by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I remembered one anecdote Putin told in his book about being a spy in East Germany. 

He revealed that in Berlin in November 1989, he was greatly distressed by the weakness of the declining Soviet Union. 

As the wall came down and crowds surged around the KGB complex, “we asked Moscow for instructions,” Putin recalled.

“But nothing came. Moscow was silent.”

Vladimir Vladimirovich, I thought, had determined even back then that Moscow would never be silent again. 

Former NBC and ABC foreign correspondent Jim Laurie is the author of The Last Helicopter: Two Lives in Indochina, a memoir of Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1970s.