A former classmate of Vladimir Putin says he could “get into a fight with anyone” - and while he wasn’t the strongest of their class, he would get into a “frenzy” and fight to the end.
Viktor Borisenko went to school with the Russian president in the 1960s, in Leningrad’s Dzerzhinsky district.
Viktor said that when a fight broke out, Putin was the first to pile in.
He seemed to have no fear, Viktor said, and it seemed not to occur to him that the other boy was stronger and could beat him up.
“If some hulking guy offended him, he would jump straight at him — scratch him, bite him, pull out clumps of his hair … He wasn’t the strongest in our class, but in a fight he could beat anyone because he would get into a frenzy and fight to the end,” Viktor told The Times.
Putin’s form teacher at the time, 26-year-old newly qualified Tamara Chizova, was driven to despair by the student, who she described as “sneaky and disorganised” and a child who would “definitely cause problems".
Putin was born on October 7, 1952, to Maria Ivanovna and her husband, Vladimir Spiridonovich at the Snegiryov hospital in Leningrad.
The couple had lost two children previously and as a result, Maria was obsessively protective of Volodya, as they called him, as a boy.
Putin’s father had been part of Russia ’s peasantry who flocked to the cities from the countryside in the 1930s to work in the factories during Stalin’s industrialisation drive. He was a foreman at the Yogorov Railway Carriage Works and secretary of his workshop Communist Party Committee.
Putin was not sent to Soviet preschool - where teachers instilled ideas of collective responsibility and precepts of morality - but instead his mother taught him to read, write and learn his numbers.
The Russian president later wrote that “apart from him”, his mother had “no other goal in life”.
The Putins shared their apartment, which had no central heating, hot water or bathroom, with two other families. It was primitive but Putin later said he never felt disadvantaged or miserable. His father earned a good wage and the family had a Bakelite telephone and television set, which made Putin the envy of his friends.
In 1965, a 12-year-old Volodya’s behaviour began to improve as he started to think about what he wanted to do with his life. He had made the transition from elementary to secondary school and he had a new form teacher, with whom he got on well.
He was quick with a good memory and his grades began to improve as his new teacher began to mentor him.
Around this time Putin also discovered sambo; a form of mixed martial arts based on judo, which had been developed by the Red Army in the 1920s for use in hand-to-hand combat. His trainer, Anatoly Rakhlin, said he stood out for his single mindedness and the way he fought each fight as though it were his last.
While Putin later wrote of the positive role sambo had in his life, his parents strongly disapproved, as the sports clubs were frequented by criminals. However, he went on to rank as a sportsman in sambo at a national level.
Putin’s early ambitions to become an airline pilot later changed when he began to read about the military and spies. When he was turning 16, he went to the KGB headquarter in Leningrad and asked what he needed to do to be accepted as a recruit, and was advised to head to law school.
He qualified and in 1970 entered the Law Faculty at Leningrad State University for the first time. He was described as shunning socialising for study and sport and in March 1975 was offered a position with the KGB.
Putin’s starting position with the security agency for the Soviet Union was as junior lieutenant. His work lifted his parents up financially and they later moved into a two-bedroom apartment. He acquired a steady girlfriend, medical student Lyudmila Khmarina and his career continued to progress.
Soon after his relationship with Lyudmila ended, he became involved with a flight attendant from Kaliningrad named Lyudmila Shkrebneva, who later became his wife.
She described him as unpredictable and mistrustful - for 18 months he kept up a cover that he worked for the police, rather than the KGB.
Putin’s ways led to their eventual divorce in 2013, after the pair had a child together.
Acquaintances of Putin later said it was unclear whether his training as a KGB officer informed who he became, or whether this was already inset into his character. However, Putin himself has on record said that much of what he was taught in the KGB he already knew long before.
He had been brought up not to show his emotions, and even as a child, concealed his hand, only revealing his hand if there was good reason. While Putin’s time with the special services influenced his thinking, it seems he was the person he would become before he joined the KGB.
