Sunday December 12th 2021
After the collapse of the USSR
Putin increased his income as a taxi driver
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s current President Putin also struggled financially. In order to top up his budget, he had to take jobs back then, which he says he finds difficult to talk about today.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to have earned extra income with private taxi rides. The collapse of the USSR was a “tragedy” for “most of the citizens”, says Putin in a Channel One film about the history of Russia from which the state news agency RIA Novosti published excerpts in advance.
During this time, Putin reported that he occasionally increased his income by taking private taxi rides. “Sometimes I had to earn extra money.” He adds, “It’s awkward to talk about, to be honest, but unfortunately it was.” A few years ago, Putin described the fall of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. The USSR was officially dissolved in December 1991.
Born in 1952, Putin was a spy for the Soviet secret service KGB at the beginning of his career. From 1985 to 1990 he worked in Dresden. Details of Putin’s espionage activities in East Germany are not known. However, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he also had an identity card from the GDR State Security.