Video footage has emerged showing an awkward-looking Vladimir Putin wearing a shell suit and sporting a longer haircut on a visit to Finland during the early 1990s.
The Finnish broadcaster YLE obtained the previously unseen amateur film from an anonymous source. It was shot on a May Day holiday soon after Putin – then about 40 and a KGB officer – had become an adviser to Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg at the time.
In the video, Putin and Sobchak play table tennis against the mayor’s bodyguards. At one point, Putin cracks a smile. He repeatedly scratches his neck.
The party later go fishing. Putin, apparently aware he is being filmed, keeps his back to the camera. The others shout towards the shore.
On their return, Putin’s then wife, Lyudmila, is seen gutting the catch, a pike. Their two daughters, Maria and Katerina, are visible. The footage also shows Putin trying his hand at darts.
The film was shot at a corporate hospitality villa owned by a Finnish company, Thomesto, which imported timber from Russia. The villa was located on the island of Torsö, in Raseborg, about 60 miles west of Helsinki, on Finland’s southern coast.
Putin returned to Leningrad – now St Petersburg – in 1990 after spending five years as a KGB intelligence officer in the east German city of Dresden. He joined Sobchak’s team and became head of the committee on external relations, responsible for trade deals and foreign investment.
The first corruption allegations against Putin date from this period. Putin claims he resigned from the KGB in August 1991 in protest at its unsuccessful coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. According to YLE’s source, Putin confirmed he worked for the spy agency during the visit.
The source described Lyudmila Putina as “very pleasant”. The person added: “You couldn’t get close to Putin, like where you might drink a little and booze together and talk about women and life – nothing like that. He was very restrictive about alcohol and didn’t smoke cigarettes.”
The video shows the group having a relaxed lunch with beer and wine inside a stone-built building. Sobchak holds court at the head of the table. Putin can be seen chewing vigorously. When the mayor is served a large chunk of meat, Putin makes a joke about the market economy – introduced in Russia after the collapse of communism.
According to YLE’s source, Putin said very little in the Raseborg villa. He did ask one question: what would happen if “one and a half million Russians” crossed the border into Finland. At the time, Russians were suffering from acute shortages of food and basic goods.
In the 1990s, Putin was a frequent visitor to Finland. His later appearances as Russia’s prime minister and president have been carefully controlled. YLE said the video was a “far cry from the macho, dictatorial image that Putin has since hewn for himself”.
