Vladimir Putin was a "snitch" who was "hated" at his Moscow spy school, a source claimed - and an official evaluation of the now-President deemed him "uncommunicative."
Yuri Shvets, who also trained at the Andropov Red Banner Institute, told author Richard Lourie that he wasn't well-regarded.
At the academy, Putin was elected division leader by Colonel Mikhail Frolov, who he had impressed by wearing a three-piece suit to his lecture on a sweltering 32-degree summer day.
All of the student's future jobs depended on the evaluation that Frolov would give them - with some deemed unsuitable to be a spy.
Division leaders such as Putin were expected to provide extra information on their fellow students for these assessments - but it left them highly unpopular.
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In the 2017 book ' Putin: His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash', Former KGB major Yuri said of Putin: "We had 'uncles' who wrote our references and used 'elders' or the leaders of the groups who reported to them.
"Vova [Putin] was a leader - a snitch. Every-one hated the leader."
And when Frolov wrote his evaluation of Putin, it was a mixed appraisal, with some odd notes for a man who went on to become President.
Among the positive elements, he added that Putin was "somewhat withdrawn and uncommunicative," and said he had a "lowered sense of danger."
But he recommended Putin for assignment - and even attended his inauguration as President in 2000.
In 2019, declassified KGB documents released by the Russian government described Vladimir Putin as a "conscientious and disciplined" spy.
'Comrade V.V. Putin constantly improves his ideological and political standards. He's actively engaged in the party education network,' the profile claimed. 'He constantly improves his professional skills.'
Putin, 69, became president of Russia in 2000, having formerly led the Russian Federation's FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB.
He had served in the USSR's spy agency for 16 years, between 1975 and 1991, after graduating from the Moscow KGB academy.
But he resigned in 1991 to enter politics in Saint Petersburg.
The Russian president has previously credited his past in the KGB for preparing him for the presidency.
As an intelligence agency the KGB was notorious for hostile disinformation campaigns - tactics the government have been used now after invading Ukraine.
This includes un-evidenced accusations that US-funded biolabs in Ukraine was secretly producing chemical weapons, and early claims that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy had fled Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
