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Putin’s Stasi ID card found in Dresden archive

A Stasi ID card belonging to Russian president Vladimir Putin has been coincidentally found in a Dresden archive, German media reported Tuesday.

Putin's Stasi ID card found in Dresden archive
Russian President Vladimir Putin standing in Dresden during a visit in 2006. Photo: DPA

Years before Vladimir Putin was a politician, the 66-year-old Russian president was active as a KGB official in Dresden. There he also had an identity card from the State Security (Stasi) of the GDR, Spiegel Online reported on Tuesday.

The document had been lying unnoticed in the archives for years, said Konrad Felber, head of the Dresden branch of the Stasi documentation authority.

The identity card was issued on December 31st, 1985 and was repeatedly extended until the end of 1989.

With the document, Putin was able to enter and leave the Stasi offices sans extensive control, Felber explained. “This does not automatically mean, however, that Putin worked for the Stasi.

“In Soviet times, the KGB and the Stasi were friendly services. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that there were also mutual ID cards,” Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

Due to a media inquiry, files of the “cadre and training” department of the former Stasi district administration in Dresden had been searched, Felber said.

This had led to the discovery of the identity card. “It is already a small sensation,” he added. “Putin's name was not recorded in the files that prove the issue of identity cards to Soviet military personnel.”

Putin was an eyewitness when, during the peaceful revolution on December 5th, 1989, around 5000 demonstrators occupied the hermetically sealed Dresden’s district administration of the Stasi.

As the demonstrators approached the office, there were violent clashes with Soviet military personnel.

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RUSSIA

Russia announces no New Year’s greetings for France, US, Germany

US President Joe Biden, France's Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will not be receiving New Year's greetings from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Friday.

Russia announces no New Year's greetings for France, US, Germany

As the world gears up to ring in the New Year this weekend, Putin sent congratulatory messages to the leaders of Kremlin-friendly countries including Turkey, Syria, Venezuela and China.

But Putin will not wish a happy New Year to the leaders of the United States, France and Germany, countries that have piled unprecedented sanctions on Moscow over Putin’s assault on Ukraine.

“We currently have no contact with them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“And the president will not congratulate them given the unfriendly actions that they are taking on a continuous basis,” he added.

Putin shocked the world by sending troops to pro-Western Ukraine on February 24.

While Kyiv’s Western allies refused to send troops to Ukraine, they have been supplying the ex-Soviet country with weapons in a show of support that has seen Moscow suffer humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.

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