Russia: taxi driver and spy, Putin recounts his end of the USSR in a film
Russian statesman Vladimir Putin, here in March 2000. AP - Alexander Zemlianichenko
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
The fall of the USSR, but above all the difficult years that followed: this is the theme of the documentary film
Russia, recent history,
broadcast on December 12 on Russian state television.
President Vladimir Poutine poses there as an ordinary man, also a victim of those years.
And too bad if this story seems unlikely.
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With our correspondent in Moscow,
Anissa El Jabri
“
In the early 1990s, you had just returned from Germany.
How did you manage to overcome this difficult period?
A compassionate and attentive question from the host for
Vladimir Putin
in the film
Russia, Recent History.
The ex-spy returning from East Germany, who has since become president of the Russian Federation, replies in all modesty: “
But I did like everyone else!
I lived like everyone else, and sometimes I had to earn extra extra money with my car as a private driver.
It's nasty to talk about it to be honest, but unfortunately it was.
"
"The collapse of historic Russia as the Soviet Union"
The remark leaves many people skeptical in Russia, where we remember in particular that in May 1990, Vladimir Poutine was already adviser to the mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobtchak, considered as his mentor.
But for the Russian president, who poses to the ordinary man, the essence of the message, in this film as elsewhere, is geopolitical.
“
After all, what is
the collapse of the Soviet Union
?
asks Vladimir Putin.
It is the collapse of historic Russia as the Soviet Union.
We have lost 30 to 40% of the territory, of our production capacities, of the population.
"
Today's Russia, heir to the Soviet Union: the essential language for the territorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin.
► To read also: Sabine Dullin: "Putin is guided by the imperial past"
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Russia
Vladimir Poutine