The Kremlin came up with myths about Putin's dispersal of a drunken crowd in Dresden and the shooting of his helicopter in 1999

Vladimir Putin’s exaggerated concern for personal safety came into focus again this week: according to European intelligence, because of this, the head of state has begun to appear in public less frequently in recent months and even avoided visiting some residences. This destroys the public image of Putin that propaganda has created over the past decades. The myths about the “reduced sense of danger” and the “shelling” of a helicopter on New Year’s Eve 2000 became important for the image of the president. Both stories are refuted by Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin in the new chapter of the book “The Tsar in Person.”

The myth of shooting at a helicopter. On New Year's Eve from 1999 to 2000, then still acting. The president decided to fly to Chechnya, but on the way to the rebellious region, his helicopter was fired at with tracer bullets, and back he had to drive a car along a road mined by militants, on which an explosion occurred. The president himself and his longtime ally Igor Sechin (that day he became deputy head of the presidential administration) spoke about this 18 years later - in an interview for Andrei Kondrashov’s election film called “Putin.”

• ️ Quotes : “I decided that these were actually fireworks because it was New Year. The pilots said: "What fireworks? We're under fire," Putin boasted of his courage. “A landmine went off,” Sechin added about the return trip.

• ️In reality, the shelling of the helicopter and the explosion on the road hardly took place. Putin's visit to Chechnya was covered by journalists, and none of them reported any incidents. Moreover, Mikhail Lesin (then the press minister responsible for propaganda), who accompanied Putin and Sechin, gave interviews after that trip and never mentioned the dangers that Putin could be exposed to. On the contrary, it followed from his words that everything went very calmly: “Despite the fog, a glow was visible. People continued to carry out their task."

• ️The official who participated in the preparation of that visit, in an interview with the authors of the book “The Tsar in Person,” confidently refuted the story of Putin and Sechin. According to him, he would have known for sure about the shelling and explosion, but in reality they did not occur.

The myth of dispersing a drunken crowd in Dresden. Propaganda has told many times how at the end of 1989, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin dispersed a drunken crowd that was going to storm the KGB station. It sounded most clearly in 2012 in Andrei Karaulov’s program “Moment of Truth” on Channel Five.

• ️According to this version, 5 thousand “drunk Germans” allegedly burst into the KGB courtyard, and then Putin went down the 12 steps to the crowd with a pistol that had 12 cartridges, and said: “I am an officer, I have 12 cartridges, I will leave one cartridge for myself, but, fulfilling my duty, I will shoot,” after which he slowly climbed up the same 12 steps, turned around and found that the crowd had begun to disperse.

• ️In the 2018 version of the film “Putin,” events looked a little different: an elderly resident of Berlin, who was shown more than once by state propaganda, said that he personally heard how the future president scared the crowd by ordering the building’s security to defend themselves with weapons in their hands. This version probably means that Putin did not hide his leadership status. However, the president himself, in an interview for the same film, confuses everything - he admits that he introduced himself to the crowd as an interpreter.

• ️Putin told this story completely differently in 2000 for the book “In the First Person.” From his words it followed that he did not do anything brave - he actually went out to the crowd, introducing himself as a translator, but did not threaten anyone, and, having discovered that people were aggressive, he simply called the headquarters of the Soviet group of forces asking for help, which, however, did not arrive for a long time due to the confusion of Moscow. The crowd dispersed not because of his words, but only a few hours later, when the military finally arrived at the scene.

• ️In the same book, “In the First Person,” Putin, with reference to a description of the KGB (which, however, was never shown to the public), claimed that he had a “reduced sense of danger.” This statement began to look strange during Covid, when the president took unprecedented measures to avoid getting sick - in particular, for several years after the start of the pandemic, his close associates had to isolate themselves in order to meet with him.

Context . Russian propaganda has been caught more than once making up stories about the dangers facing Putin. Thus, in May 2025, the authorities lied that during Putin’s trip to the Kursk region, his helicopter “came into the epicenter of repelling an attack” by Ukrainian drones. As The Moscow Times wrote, citing four sources in the government and the Kremlin, the security forces came up with this shocking “risky” episode to convince Russians that the president is not hiding behind their backs, but allegedly also takes risks and sacrifices

• ️In the West, Putin is not considered brave - this week one of the European intelligence services leaked its report to the media, which claims that the Federal Security Service has strengthened measures to protect Putin, and he himself allegedly fears a coup.

The new chapter of the book “The Tsar in Person” is available from today in the electronic version of the book in Russian