Putin applied to join KGB at 16By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor
VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russia's leader, was so eager to join the KGB he offered his services as a teenager, but was told to go to university and come back later, which he did. In a series of wide-ranging interviews, Russia's acting President, 47, who is headed for victory at the polls in eight days' time, has confessed to a turbulent early love affair, a lifelong devotion to the secret police, and a disturbing inclination not to register fear. The extraordinary revelations are in "Conversations with Vladimir Putin", published by Vagrius in Moscow, which appears abroad for the first time today in "The Times". Since he rose from obscurity last year to become Prime Minister and was made Boris Yelt-sin's successor on New Year's Eve, Western leaders have been scrambling to find out who the new leader really is. Mr Putin grew up in a working-class district of Leningrad, now St Petersburg. His father was badly injured in the war and his mother almost died from starvation during the Nazi siege of the city. He had an unremarkable early academic career and describes himself as "a hooligan" and "real ruffian". However, inspired by thrillers and spy films, he decided that he wanted to join the secret police. "I went to the Leningrad regional KGB headquarters. I was 16 and had just started the ninth form at school," Mr Putin recalls. He was politely told to obtain a law degree and wait to be approached. Later he was recruited to work in the foreign intelligence service. Although he had a successful career as a spy, his KGB assessment picked up a major flaw, a "lowered sense of danger", which he interprets as a failure to respond to a threat. His love life was more complicated. He was about to get married to a medical student, and had even bought the engagement rings and set the date, when he got cold feet. "I must have seemed a complete bastard. But I had decided it was better to do it then than for both of us to suffer afterwards," he recalls. He eventually married Lyudmila Putina, an airline stewardess he met on a blind date at the theatre. The couple began life sharing his parents' tiny flat, but are now getting used to life in the Kremlin and entertaining world leaders. Mrs Putin once joined her husband on a trip to Chechnya and shared a bottle of champagne in a helicopter gunship. Related:
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