Trained in Cold War tradecraft and forged in the turmoil of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Vladimir Putin spent decades rebuilding his power—now experts warn that his KGB-era tactics of disinformation, division, and democratic sabotage are echoing across American politics.
MOSCOW | When the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, a young intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin watched from the front row—not as a politician, but as a career KGB operative stationed in East Germany, witnessing a superpower’s collapse from inside its own security apparatus. That experience, former colleagues say, would shape not only his worldview but the strategies he would later deploy to rebuild Russia’s influence—and undermine Western democracy.
For Putin, the fall of the USSR was not just a political crisis. It was, in his own words, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” The chaos, corruption, and national humiliation that followed fueled his determination to restore Moscow’s power—by any means necessary.
