Vladimir Putin a wife-beater, depressive, drinker, claims documentary

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:


Vladimir Putin a wife-beater, depressive, drinker, claims documentary

Date February 21, 2015
Justin Huggler



New claims about Russia's President Vladimir Putin's personal life are made in the film. Photo: AFP

Berlin: Vladimir Putin was regularly violent to his ex-wife Lyudmila during their marriage, a German documentary on the Russian leader has claimed.

Putin the Man, made by ZDF television and shown this week, claimed to have been given access to the unseen files of an unidentified Western intelligence agency. They included details of Mr Putin's time as a young KGB officer stationed in Dresden in the Eighties, as well as his rise to power in Russia.

A secretary inside the Dresden office code-named "Lehnchen", who befriended Mrs Putin, told how he used to beat his wife regularly.

Far from his image as a fitness fanatic today, the young Mr Putin was overweight and a heavy drinker, according to the documentary.

"He was depressed, fat, lazy and disillusioned," Mahsa Gessen, an author and activist told the documentary. The files included the testimony of a woman identified as "Mrs H" who said Mr Putin groped her at a party, and that his colleagues blamed it on alcohol.

It was the collapse of his KGB career, caused by the fall of the Soviet Union, that made Mr Putin turn his life around and fight his way back to the centre of power, according to the documentary.

It presented new evidence that he has misrepresented an incident from 1989, when anti-Communist protesters tried to storm the KGB office in Dresden before the Berlin Wall fell. Mr Putin has always claimed that he talked the protesters down while posing as an interpreter. But Siegfried Dannath, one of the demonstrators, told the film-makers that Mr Putin had appeared in full uniform and told the crowd his men had orders to shoot.

That version was corroborated by Sergei Bezrukov, a former KGB colleague of Mr Putin's.

The documentary also said Mr Putin had been left paranoid and obsessed with holding on to power after a series of assassination attempts.

The files identified five attempts on Mr Putin's life, including one in London that was foiled by Scotland Yard. Previous reports have said that two men were arrested in London in 2003 in connection with a suspected plot to kill Mr Putin.

The files also mention attempts in Moscow, St Petersburg, Tehran and the Azerbaijani capital Baku, as well as a failed coup shortly after Mr Putin was appointed prime minister under President Boris Yelstin in 1999.

Vladimir Putin once deliberately kept the Queen waiting half an hour, according to the German documentary. It depicts the Russian president as being obsessed with making others wait.

He regularly keeps his own ministers waiting two or three hours, and has made Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, wait four or five hours before a meeting.

Telegraph, London





Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.