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Investigation of Shenderovich and Co.
Against the backdrop of Putin ... An unexpected continuation gets a high-profile story with a picture taken by Ronald Reagan's personal photographer on Red Square in May 1988. The New Times has new unique photo documents at its disposal
Let us recall the background of the question. Reagan's personal photographer, Pete Souza, found a 20-year-old photograph in his archives (see photo 1). Walking through Red Square, Ronald Reagan, at the suggestion of Mikhail Gorbachev, approached a group of random tourists posed as KGB agents. Among them, according to Souza, was Vladimir Putin, who got into the frame.
In May 1972
The words of the photographer, however, immediately raised doubts among experts: at that time, at least according to the official biography, Vladimir Putin was in the GDR ... Perhaps this story would have remained a secret if not for the investigation conducted by The New Times, as a result of which truly sensational facts were discovered. Sixteen years before Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon visited the USSR. In May 1972, he also visited Leningrad, where he also took a walk around the city. This walk remained for a long time in the memory of Leningraders, who were locked up in their apartments for that time: according to the testimony of members of the American delegation, there was not a single person on the streets of the northern capital that day, as if the whole city was arrested. However, The New Times managed to find out that this is not so! At least one person was there. In the picture, which was at the disposal of our magazine, a young man is clearly visible, disguised as a simple Leningrader, walking alone near the US President (see picture 2). Recall that at that time Putin was indeed in Leningrad, he was a law student and had already collaborated with the KGB (undercover name - Romashkin).¹
In September 1955 But that's not all! 89-year-old German photographer Hans-Georg Lügner discovered and sent to The New Times a photograph taken in September 1955 during an official visit to Moscow by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (see photograph 3). “After more than half a century, in one of the pictures, I noticed a small blond-haired boy,” says the photographer. - And in my memory, an insignificant episode, as it seemed then, surfaced: a boy separated from the crowd of Soviet people selected by the KGB in advance, approached the German delegation and said: “Guten tag!”
1 Little-known fact: in the unpublished memoirs of songwriter Igor Shaferan, there is a memory that the line "the daisies hid" was inspired by his chance meeting with Vladimir Putin in a Leningrad pub in the fall of 1971.