Putin visits his former KGB chief
President Vladimir Putin visited and congratulated his former boss from the State Security Committee of the USSR (KGB), Lazar Matveyev, under whom Putin worked in Dresden in the Ministry of State Security of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the second half of the 1980s, RIA Novosti reported.
Putin personally went to visit Matveyev, who lives in the Zhulebino District of Moscow, and congratulated him on his 90th birthday.
The president visited Matveyev with two of his former colleagues in the GDR – Nikolai Tokarev, who currently heads Transneft, and Sergey Chemezov, who heads Rostec.
Putin gave Matveyev a watch as well as a copy of the newspaper Pravda which was published on the day of his birth in 1927.
Information about the meeting of the KGB colleagues later appeared on the Kremlin's official website.
In 1970, Vladimir Putin entered the law program of Leningrad State University, and he graduated in 1975. In the late 1970s – early 1980s, Putin attended and graduated from the Moscow KGB School No. 1. In 1985 he was sent to work in the GDR, where he worked until 1990. According to a biographical note on the president’s official website, Putin served in the territorial intelligence service in Dresden. Because of his length of service, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and worked as the senior assistant to the chief of the department. And in 1989, Putin was awarded a bronze medal “For outstanding service to the National People's Army of the GDR.”
“I had a good job. It was considered normal if, when working in a foreign assignment, you were promoted once. I was promoted twice,” Putin said.
In the fall of 1989, the “Velvet Revolution” took place in East Germany, and the country's leadership resigned after public protests. In November, the borders between West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) were opened, and in October 1990, the former GDR became part of Germany.