Putin was nothing more than a KGB “errand boy” dealing mostly with trivial paperwork.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been portrayed to the world as an elite Soviet spy, with the former intelligence officer reportedly conducting top-secret and dangerous operations.

But far from the heroic figure he has been painted to be, Putin was nothing more than a KGB “errand boy” who handled mostly trivial paperwork, a Der Spiegel report revealed.

Mystery has shrouded Putin’s 16 years at the spy agency in the 1980s, but inside Russia stories have emerged about the despot holding secret meetings with terrorists from the Red Army Faction in West Germany and single-handedly defending the looters KGB offices.

However, Putin’s former colleagues in the KGB have painted a very different picture, with one saying that the now Russian president worked mainly on “banal” administrative tasks.

In fact, some have suggested that his service with the KGB in the friendly territory of Dresden in East Germany showed that he had not been very skilled as an intelligence agent.

Horst Jehmlich, a former Stasi officer who worked with Putin in the KGB’s Dresden office, told the German newspaper that the despot was nothing more than an “errand boy.”

Another former KGB spy, who also worked in the Dresden office, said Putin’s job “mainly consisted of endlessly checking requests for visits from West German relatives or searching for potential informants among foreign students at Dresden University.” “.

And in a further blow to the image that has been built around Putin’s time as a spy, Putin is rarely mentioned in East German secret police records.

When Putin is mentioned, it is only his birthday or administrative tasks that are mentioned rather than any evidence of his heroism represented by those closest to him.

Putin served in the USSR spy agency for 16 years, between 1975 and 1991, after graduating from a KGB school in Moscow.

In 2018, the German newspaper Bild published a photograph of Putin’s ID card given to him by the KGB’s East German partner agency, the Stasi, in 1985 when he was 33 years old.

The identification would have allowed Putin to enter and exit Stasi offices without hindrance, meaning he could recruit agents without saying he worked for the KGB.

The ID card, which was issued to Major Vladimir Putin, was signed and validated with stamps every three months until the end of 1989.

The document was found in the files of the Dresden Stasi office on “cadres and education”.

At the time of the discovery, Konrad Felber, who heads the Dresden branch of the authority that oversees Stasi archives, told Bild: “Until now it was completely unknown that Putin, who worked until 1990 as a KGB agent in Dresden, also had a Stasi.” passport because it is not listed in the file containing the service cards issued to Soviet military personnel.

Putin officially rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning in 1991 to enter politics in Saint Petersburg.

But even this is disputed, with Oleg Kalugin, a former high-ranking KGB officer, saying in 2015 that the despot had lied and was “just a major” at the spy agency.

The now Russian president was stationed in East Germany in 1985, working in the city of Dresden until 1990, where he lived with his wife, now divorced, Lyudmila Putina. His second child was born there in 1986.

He returned to Leningrad in 1990 and began working for the reformist mayor of the city. Putin resigned from the KGB a year later, on the second day of the failed KGB-backed coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Putin has previously credited his KGB past with grooming him for the presidency.