Vladimir Putin as you have by no means seen him earlier than as unrecognisable snaps unearthed

Vladimir Putin has in a method or one other served the Russian state for many years.

He has held both of the nation’s high jobs — Prime Minister and President — for the final 23 years with little opposition to his rule.

Things might change within the subsequent yr as Russia heads in the direction of its 2024 presidential elections after Express.co.uk was informed that the Federal Security Service (FSB) is already eyeing up prospective leaders.

But nonetheless, the person whose look has largely remained unchanged within the final twenty years stays on the helm.

The world has grown so used to a picture of Putin that it could shock some to see unearthed images of the chief in his youth and as a fledgling KGB agent.

One picture, dated July 1958, reveals a five-year-old Putin sitting on his mom Maria Ivanovna Shelomova’s lap.

While it’s unclear the place the {photograph} was taken, Putin was born and grew up in Leningrad — present-day St Petersburg — and was the youngest of three kids of Maria and Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin.

Both of his older brothers died earlier than he was born, Albert passing in infancy within the 30s whereas Viktor died of diphtheria and hunger in the course of the siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany.

His grandfather was a private cook dinner to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the 2 males who reworked Russia below Communism.

By 1960, Putin had enrolled at college and at age 12 started to practise sambo and judo, two martial arts he has continued to take pleasure in all through his life.

Fast ahead to 1975 and he had signed as much as work for the KGB, later dabbling in counterintelligence earlier than being transferred to a publish monitoring foreigners and consular officers in St Petersburg.

Another unearthed picture, this time of his time within the KGB, was taken some 5 years after he joined. It reveals a 28-year-old Putin with a full head of blonde combed-over hair.

Five years after the {photograph} was taken Putin would be sent to serve in Dresden, East Germany, the place he used an undercover identification as a translator to assemble intelligence for the Soviets.

Working as a KGB liaison officer with the Stasi secret police, he rose by means of the ranks and was counseled by the East German communist regime with a bronze medal for “faithful service to the National People’s Army”.

Putin has talked fondly of his time in Dresden. While East Germany was nonetheless largely reduce off from Western Europe, he was in a position to extra simply entry Western items in comparison with when he was in Russia.

Boris Reitschuster, Putin’s German biographer, informed the BBC in 2015 that Putin “enjoyed [Dresden] very much, this little paradise for him”.

He would unwind by ingesting his favorite Radeberger beer on the Am Thor pub, which up till just a few years in the past had a shrine devoted to him.

The Russian as soon as visited the German city of Radeberg the place the beer was first made in 1872 particularly to tour the brewery.

He indulged a lot within the golden liquid that he as soon as confessed his time in Dresden noticed him achieve 13 kilograms by ingesting round three litres of the stuff each week.

Happy recollections of the nation put him on footing with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was born and raised within the East.

When the pair met for political discussions, Merkel would usually present him just a few bottles for previous instances sake.

Vladimir Usoltsev, a former KGB colleague of Putin’s, beforehand informed the BBC that he additionally loved pouring over Western mail-order catalogues and studying about completely different fashions and developments.

His second daughter, Katerina, was born in Dresden, cementing the place the town had in his coronary heart, telling Mr Reitschuster throughout interviews for the biography of his “closeness” to it.

“It was one of many only a few moments when he appeared a bit of bit emotional and touched,” Mr Reitschuster said.

“He stated, ‘Oh my daughter said her first words in Germany. I’m very near this nation.’ You might see that he was moved.”