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1988: Reagan, Right; Putin, Left

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 16, 2009 2:34 PM CDT

(Newser) – It’s 1988. President Ronald Reagan is making a visit to the Soviet Union, where he tours Moscow’s Red Square alongside Mikhail Gorbachev. He stops and takes questions from a group of tourists about human rights in the United States. Except they’re not tourists, Radio Free Europe reports. They’re KGB agents and their families. And one of them is Col. Vladimir Putin.

The photo is courtesy of Pete Souza, photographer for Reagan and now President Obama, Foreign Policy adds. “I can’t believe these tourists in the Soviet Union are asking these pointed questions,” Souza said to a Secret Service agent at the time. “Oh, these are all KGB families,” the agent replied. At least that explains why now-Prime Minister Putin looks like a “dorky tourist.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent.   (AP Photo)
Reagan in Moscow's Red Square in 1988. The purported Putin is the blond man with cameras on the left.
Reagan in Moscow's Red Square in 1988. The purported Putin is the blond man with cameras on the left.   (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
President Ronald Reagan in 1981.   (AP Photo)
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.   (AP Photo)
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COMMENTS
Showing 2 of 2 comments
BackAgain
Mar 17, 2009 11:04 AM CDT
Should of taken the shot.
Assassin
Mar 16, 2009 9:35 AM CDT
Now Putin looks like a Dorky Child Molester.

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