DRESDEN, Germany — Meticulous. Reticent. Clever, but never showy about it. Ever the watcher.
It was 1989. The young Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a KGB officer in the then-East German city of Dresden, and it was one of history's pivotal moments.
The Berlin Wall had fallen. The repressive government of one of the Soviet Union's most prized satellite states was collapsing, a prelude to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. itself. The reunification of East and West Germany was just months away.
