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Vladimir Putin is known for being Russia’s “accidental president”. This might seem like a term fitting to his position, as he came to power remarkably quickly. Achieving his status as Russia’s prime minister created a sense of astonishment among the majority of the citizens. After all, it was extraordinary that someone who didn’t have much of a background like Putin suddenly had the power to rule the whole country. However, it appears that Putin’s coming to power wasn’t because of his good luck. Indeed, he was carefully observed by the former KGB agents. This observation started since he became a part of the mayoral administration of Leningrad. Whether he was loyal or not was tested and the image he had created in the public appearances was carefully evaluated. Putin’s association with KGB agents started way before his time in politics, and his time as the prime minister helped to implement their power in Russian politics. This summary will explore how that situation happened and its effects on both Russia and the West today. Chapter 1 - Before his time in politics, Vladimir Putin was among the members of KGB. Joining the KGB, the secret police force of the Soviet Union, was Vladimir Putin’s childhood dream. He wanted to follow his father, his desire to become like his father was so strong that he got in touch with the local Leningrad KGB office to ask if he can be a member before graduating the school. Putin made sure to follow the directions of the KGB office and chose his programs and classes according to them during his education. He followed these directions meticulously. During this time, he used judo to vent his aggression. Shortly after becoming a member of the KGB, Putin went to Dresden, East Germany, in 1985. He experienced secret missions, smuggling, and assassination for the first time there. Dresden was known to be the East German backwater when Putin arrived there. There were only six KGB officers that were on duty there. During this time, East Germany was struggling with bankruptcy, and the ruling Communist Party was facing the risk of collapse. The KGB issued a secret mission, named Operation Luch, after recognizing these problems. The aim of the mission was to create a network of agents to become members of political circles. If the mission was successful, the KGB would continue to survive in Germany, even if the country became reunified. Putin’s place in this mission is mostly a mystery. However, it is known that he became the main KGB liaison officer with the Stasi, the East German secret police. He was given a Stasi identification card. With this id card, he was allowed to go into Stasi buildings, making it convenient for him to find and employ agents for Operation Luch. A big part o this mission depended on terrorism. To be more precise, the KGB had relations with the Red Army Faction, which was a Marxist community in West Germany. The Red Army Faction aided the KGB in protecting its interests. At one time, the chairman of the Deutsche Bank was killed while driving to work due to a grenade that was found in his car. There is a chance that the attack was triggered by a Red Army Faction member since it is apparent that the group knows military detonation techniques thanks to the training camps of the Stasi. After the chairman’s death, Deutsche Bank lost its power, and a Stasi-related bank had the chance to gain power. Such mysterious operations of the KGB and the Stasi were only the beginning of Putin’s rise to power. Chapter 2 - A community of young business magnates started to become more powerful than the KGB in the 1990s. During the Soviet Union era, the Communist Party in power and the KGB were quite similar to each other. They conducted numerous financial crimes together. An example of the crimes committed by the two organizations is the KGB bootlegging millions of dollars to left-leaning groups overseas. The legal way to handle the situation was to transfer the funds from donations to the Communist Party. Thus, the Communist Party members received money from the government. And then the money was transferred overseas via the KB. The KGB fundamentally had the authority on the finances and economy of the country thanks to the Communist Party. Yet, the age of liberal reforms of Boris Yeltsin changed the dynamics. Boris overthrew Mikhail Gorbachev and became the president in 1991. In October 1991, President Yeltsin commanded the abolishment of the KGB. He changed the structure of the KGB and separated it into four domestic factions. However, former KGB operatives kept their titles as advisors, were employed in government positions, and supervised the oil sector from the 1990s to the 1950s. Yet, the agents soon started to lose their power. Yeltsin’s sweeping democratic reforms were one of the main reasons behind this loss. These reforms involved the privatization of several industries. Soon enough, young business tycoons begin to gain power. They were later known as the oligarchs. Although Yeltsin wished to make reforms, his state coffers were drying up. Seeing this, a banker called Vladimir Potanin offered an ingenious scheme. The scheme was known as loans-for-shares privatization. Supporting the Russian government with loans would be rewarded with tycoons receiving stakes in the country’s greatest enterprises in oil and other resources. The loans-for-shares privatizations helped the tycoons to become immensely powerful and influential, leaving behind the influence of former KGB officials. Among these deals was the time when Potanin received a controlling stake in Norilsk Nickel, a company with profits of $1.2 billion in 1995. Potanin received the stake in Norilsk Nickel for little more than the price of the loan. The oligarchs had immense authority over numerous industries in Russia. Yet, somewhere near them, in St. Petersburg, KGH agents still had power. Chapter 3 - The KGB was able to control St. Petersburg’s economy thanks to Vladimir Putin. During the first half of the 1990s, the Soviet Union began collapsing. Vladimir Putin was commanded to go back to Leningrad since St. Petersburg was known. He inspected the boom of Leningrad’s pro-democracy movement. The movement appeared as a high risk to the Communist Party’s authority on the politics of Leningrad. Putin started to act as the connection between the KGB and Anatoly Sobchak in a short time. Sobchak, an attractive law professor, often talked about the benefits of democracy and his rejection of the KGB in public. But behind the closed doors, he is believed to have had unofficial business with the KGB. Before May of that year, Sobchak started his position as the new city council chairman. Putin was his right-hand man. Soon, Sobchak became mayor. The conditions of the city were not good. The coffers weren’t full, shop shelves didn’t have anything more than some pickled cucumbers. And policing was lax, thus the situations were perfect for organized crime groups to force themselves on local businesses. It was complete havoc. The result of this havoc was an alliance between Putin and the KGB. This alliance then helped the organization to control the economy of the city. The KGB started to flourish with the emergence of a slush fund, also called an obschak. The fund was spent by transferring cash to the KGB for its personal use and strategic moves. Putin’s committee provided $95 million worth of export licenses to a group of front companies in order to create the obschak. On the surface, these companies brought in food imports. The city was desperately in need of food; however, they didn’t receive anything. All the money was used for the obschak instead. In addition to the obschak, the KGB was in charge of the Leningrad seaport, which was run by Viktor Kharchenko. Someday in 1993, Kharchenko was stopped by the police. They made him get off the train and charged him with stealing. He was able to escape from his charge, but that didn’t stop Putin’s KGB comrades from assigning someone among them to his place. Eventually, the KGB was able to control Leningrad’s seaport and oil terminal thanks to Ilya Traber. Traber was related to the Tambov organized crime group. Putin and his lieutenant issued licenses to let Traber be in charge of the port and the oil terminal with a member of the KGB, Gennady Timchenko. Along with Putin’s presidency, all of the people continued to take senior executive positions in the important assets of the country. Chapter 4 - Putin continued to rapidly advance in his position after arriving in Moscow. In 1996, Anatoly Sobchack lost his campaign to get re-elected as the mayor of St. Petersburg. Completely loyal to Sobchack, Vladimir Putin also resigned and lost his position in the city’s administration. Resigning from his position, Putin found himself invited to Moscow within a month. He was required to work for the position of deputy head of the Kremlin administration. He was ultimately blocked from the position. Instead of that, he became head of the Kremlin’s foreign property department, a role that constituted the core of Russia’s imperial wealth. Putin had never had such a major promotion. And it was only the beginning for Putin. He would continue to experience a dramatic rise in his positions. Upon his promotion, Putin received various other promotions in a short time. First, he started to work as the head of the Control Department. He was responsible for making sure that the president’s commands would be carried out within the so-called “unruly” regions. Just three months later, he started his position as the head of the FSB –the security services agency that was the successor of the KGB. After that, on August 9, 1999, an unexpected announcement was received: Putin would become the country’s new prime minister.