News round-up, June 9, 2023
Exclusive: Analysis by Spiegel of President Vladimir Putin's Stay as a KGB Agent in Dresden, Germany: Is it all true?
…”Over several years, a discourse has been widely circulated regarding the President of Russia. In the 1980s, Vladimir Putin held a position as a junior officer within the KGB, a prominent intelligence agency of the Soviet Union. The individual was tasked with conducting covert operations while deployed in East Germany. His responsibilities included executing covert activities. According to the reports, he sustained communication with leftist militants linked to the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany. He furnished them with armaments and directives during his tenure at the agency's station in Dresden.
Germán & CoMost Read…
Donald Trump Was Just Indicted in the Classified Documents Case. Here's What to Know
Reports state that the federal government has indicted Donald Trump and must appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon—the first indictment of a former president on federal charges. Trump also faces charges for 2016 campaign hush payments in Manhattan court. He faces seven undisclosed federal charges. Trump announced on social media that he must appear at the federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m.
TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT, JUNE 8, 2023 The future of Russia — and its opposition
It’s important for Western countries to recognize that the broad-based Russian opposition is a crucial ally in the confrontation with the Putin regime.
POLITICO EU BY MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY, JUNE 5, 2023AES buys solar + storage project in California
The Bellefield project from Avantus, one of the most significant solar-plus-storage projects in the United States. The project consists of two phases, each capable of generating 500 MW of solar power and storing up to 500 MW of energy in batteries.
Renewable Energy World, June 8, 2023Exclusive: Russia's Novatek offered Argentina know-how to liquefy gas from Vaca Muerta
Moscow now possesses control of LNG technology that was previously held by Western companies, thanks to Novatek. Russian businesses are demonstrating their technological expertise in Latin America using Russian concrete gravity base structures for Arctic LNG 2. The first train is expected to be operational by the end of the year.
REUTERS By Vladimir, Soldatkin, June 9, 2023 / Editing by Germán & CoRussian President’s Years in Germany…
Spiegel By Sven Röbel und Wolfgang Tietze, 07.06.2023
The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Image credit: by Germán & CoDonald Trump Was Just Indicted in the Classified Documents Case. Here's What to Know
Reports state that the federal government has indicted Donald Trump and must appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon—the first indictment of a former president on federal charges. Trump also faces charges for 2016 campaign hush payments in Manhattan court. He faces seven undisclosed federal charges. Trump announced on social media that he must appear at the federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m.
TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT, JUNE 8, 2023 Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges for his handling of classified documents and told to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon, he said on his Truth Social account Thursday night. ABC News broke into regular TV programming shortly after 7 p.m. to report that a grand jury in Florida had voted to indict Trump on multiple federal charges.
It is the first time a former president has faced federal charges. In a separate case, Trump is facing local charges in a Manhattan court for hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels made during his 2016 campaign. Trump has been told he is facing seven charges in the federal case, according to a source in contact with him. The exact charges were unclear.
Trump, who is running for another term as president and remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, wrote on his social media site at 7:21 pm on Thursday that he has been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel in November to oversee the investigation into whether Trump broke the law by taking sensitive national-security documents when he moved out of the White House in January 2020, or obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
The FBI obtained a search warrant in August to enter Mar-a-Lago and found more than 100 classified documents. The discovery came after Trump’s advisors had said they had already conducted a “diligent search” of the property and turned over “any and all” papers marked classified. Federal officials had been negotiating with Trump for more than a year by then over the return of government documents he had taken with him to his Mar-a-Lago Club.
The federal indictment is the latest addition to Trump’s mounting legal troubles. Smith is also overseeing a separate investigation into Trump’s role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results and encourage a violent mob of supporters to enter the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, to interrupt the certification of the election results.
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is moving forward with a case looking at Trump’s effort to reverse his 2020 loss in Georgia by encouraging state election officials to “find” votes. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump in November, alleging he fraudulently overvalued his properties to insurers and bank lenders. And in Manhattan court, District Attorney Alvin Bragg, has charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsification of business records that Bragg says were designed to hide payments intended to keep quiet his alleged affair with Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election. Trump has called all of the investigations against him hoaxes designed to hurt him politically.
Trump has made claims that he is the victim of a politically-motivated conspiracy to keep him from returning to office an animating force of his political movement. Both while in office and in the years afterward, he used two impeachments and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s effort to help Trump win the 2016 election to energize his supporters. The top of his social media feed on Truth Social reads: “THEY’RE NOT COMING AFTER ME, THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU—I’M JUST STANDING IN THEIR WAY!” When he was indicted in Manhattan in April, Trump raised more than $1 million in campaign funds off the news.
Within minutes of the news breaking Thursday evening, Trump’s campaign was fundraising off his latest indictment. “This is nothing but a disgusting act of Election Interference by the ruling party to ELIMINATE its opposition and amass total control over our country,” read one campaign email with the subject line “BREAKING: INDICTED” and paid for by Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee.
Trump’s allies were quick to defend the former President, and claim that the federal indictment was a play by President Joe Biden to torpedo Trump’s campaign. Earlier Thursday, Biden was asked at a press conference how he can restore Americans’ trust in the Department of Justice with Trump attacking it. “Because you’ll notice, I’ve never once, not one single time, suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do relative to bringing a charge or not bring a charge. I’m honest.” Biden tapped the podium twice for emphasis and walked out.
A trial date for the Manhattan case has been set for March 2024, right in the middle of the presidential campaign season. That means that Trump, who announced his intention to take back the White House in November, will be campaigning across the country while defending himself in court against two ongoing criminal cases.
Some legal experts have argued Trump is particularly vulnerable to prosecution in the documents case. “I think this one is the most damaging because not only is there so much evidence, but it goes directly to the heart of his ability to be the leader of our country,” Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, recently told TIME. “It’s truly a complete undermining of his job if he really took government documents that don’t belong to him, if he showed people government documents that could have put our country at risk, and if he obstructed justice by not complying with a subpoena.”
Even if Trump is convicted by the special counsel, the charges against him won’t disqualify him from the presidency, according to legal experts. Under the Constitution, all natural-born citizens who are at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years can run for president. There is no legal impediment to Trump continuing his presidential campaign while facing criminal charges—even if he were jailed.
“Indictment is absolutely no legal bar to him running,” says Levinson. “And a conviction is not a legal bar to him serving.”
At least two candidates with criminal convictions have run for president in the past, albeit unsuccessfully. In 1920 a candidate named Eugene Debs ran for president while in a federal prison in Atlanta as the nominee of the Socialist Party. Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act over an anti-war speech, and won more than 3% of the vote nationally. Lyndon LaRouche ran for president in every election between 1976 and 2004. LaRouche, a fringe candidate who embraced conspiracy theories, was convicted of tax and mail fraud in 1988 and ran his 1992 campaign from prison.
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…
…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Image by Germán & CoThe future of Russia — and its opposition
It’s important for Western countries to recognize that the broad-based Russian opposition is a crucial ally in the confrontation with the Putin regime.
POLITICO EU BY MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY, JUNE 5, 2023Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former political prisoner and CEO of Yukos Oil company, is the author of “The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell for Putin’s Power Gambit — and How to Fix It.”
At the initiative of Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius and others, a two-day conference will take place in the European Parliament in Brussels this week, with the participation of over 200 representatives from Russia’s anti-war and opposition groups, journalists, prominent cultural figures, as well as European politicians.
There are just two topics for discussion on the agenda: the future of Russia and the future strategy of the Russian opposition.
Previous experience, both in Russia and elsewhere, has long shown that personality-based regimes — such as the one in Moscow today — can often implode without warning, unable to withstand the stresses caused by a failed war. And at that critical moment, the country’s future depends, in large part, on who picks up the reins of power — and how.
Interestingly, the present situation in Russia is developing in such a way that at this moment, the West can have a significant — albeit not definitive — voice in this transition, since large segments of the Russian elite have an interest in the repeal of Western sanctions, imposed in response to President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
This gathering in Brussels is by no means the first coordinated action by the Russian opposition, however. The Free Russia Forum, organized by Garry Kasparov, has been meeting regularly in Vilnius since 2016; Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs organizes an annual conference with the Russian opposition; and a very productive meeting, including several of the largest European parliamentary parties, recently took place between the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Russian opposition as well.
Additionally, in preparation for the Brussels conference, around 70 anti-war and opposition groups met in Berlin in April to agree on a common declaration, which has now been signed by 30,000 Russians.
This common position is that the war is criminal, that the regime that unleashed it is illegitimate and must be removed from power, that Ukraine’s sovereignty within its 1991 borders must be restored and war criminals punished, that the victims of the aggression must be compensated and that all political prisoners and prisoners of war must be released.
We also believe that a future Russian leadership must abandon imperialism, both internally and externally.
Some of the discussions in coming to this position were not easy to have. For example, the issue of restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea is contentious for many Russians. And matters of compensation and tribunals will require serious work not only with the pro-Putin part of Russia’s population, but even with some of those opposed to the war.
Lest we forget, signing such a declaration is also regarded as a crime by the Kremlin. And the prison terms prescribed are brutal, ranging from 10 to 20 years.
Meanwhile, there’s a part of the human rights community that’s uncomfortable with violent methods of struggle against the regime. Whereas others — and I count myself among them — believe that peaceful regime change in Russia is impossible.
Despite these differences, in our discussions, we also agreed that a unification of the opposition under a single leadership, or gathered into a single party, isn’t needed. This would be a catastrophic mistake, as it would lay the foundations for the restoration of authoritarianism after Putin’s fall.
Russian citizens’ interests are no longer represented by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “criminal regime” | Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
However, I am convinced that we need to coordinate our actions on key, broad questions that concern us all, and to this end, a whole series of working groups and large-scale joint projects have already been created to provide assistance to Ukraine and Russian refugees, and they are operational. At the same time, some anti-war groups have joined forces to train those ready and committed to return to Russia on the “first flight back” after the fall of the regime.
Thus, we are already gaining experience in working as a coalition, which will serve as a good foundation for building a new, democratic model for the country, with separation of powers and a system of checks and balances.
And today, we all agree that our joint focus should be on three areas: the coordination of anti-war initiatives and humanitarian aid for Ukraine; media support for anti-war activism and counterpropaganda; and help for Russian citizens whose interests are no longer represented by Putin’s criminal regime.
I, for one, have my own ideas of what the future Russia should look like and the preferred paths to transition — the abridged version of my manifesto on this, entitled “How to Slay a Dragon,” has been translated into several European languages. And for me, personally, the key goal of this upcoming meeting in Brussels is to agree, as a coalition, on how to represent the interests of those who have cut their ties with the regime, and how best to help them in practical terms.
Besides that, the conference will also give us an important opportunity to remind European politicians of our stance:
For us, reaching a negotiated agreement with Putin about medium- or long-term issues is out of the question. Merely replacing Putin with another individual with yet another name — without a transition to a parliamentary model of governance with free and fair elections — will change nothing. And a coalition model of transition offers a real possibility of democratization, while a transition through a single revolutionary party guarantees authoritarianism.
What’s more, we believe that the break-up of Russia would be dangerous, not only for Russians but also for the West; that communication with Russian society is no less important than sanctions; and that even though the Kremlin’s unlawful influence on political processes in Western countries has diminished greatly over the past 15 months, it remains significant — and could become stronger.
All in all, it’s important for Western countries to recognize that the broad-based Russian opposition is a crucial ally in the West’s confrontation with the Putin regime — which is fast becoming increasingly fascist.
Image credit: AES / Editing by Germán & CoAES buys solar + storage project in California
The Bellefield project from Avantus, one of the most significant solar-plus-storage projects in the United States. The project consists of two phases, each capable of generating 500 MW of solar power and storing up to 500 MW of energy in batteries.
Renewable Energy World, June 8, 2023AES Corp. said it acquired from Avantus (formerly 8minute) the 2 GW Bellefield project, which is currently in late-stage development and is one of the largest permitted solar-plus-storage projects in the United States.
The project is located in Kern County, California, and includes two phases, each with 500 MW of solar and up to 500 MW of four-hour duration battery energy storage.
Phase one has a 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to deliver hourly energy to an existing AES corporate customer. AES said it expects to contract up to an additional 1 GW of solar-plus-storage in phase two of the project by the end of 2023.
The two phases were developed by the seller, Avantus, and are expected to come online in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
Additional terms were not disclosed.
Alberta Investment Management Corporation is an investor in AES’ clean energy business in the U.S. with 25% ownership of the business’ growth projects. Onpeak Capital LLC served as the financial advisor and Foley & Lardner LLP served as legal counsel for Avantus.
AES has been shifting from its portfolio of coal-fired plants to renewable energy projects. It plans to exit its coal portfolio by the end of 2025. It said it also expects to triple its renewable energy capacity by adding 25 to 30 GW of solar, wind and energy storage.
A participant walks past a stand of Russian gas producer Novatek during the Russian Energy Week International Forum in Moscow, Russia October 13, 2021. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov / Editing by Germán & CoExclusive: Russia's Novatek offered Argentina know-how to liquefy gas from Vaca Muerta
Moscow now possesses control of LNG technology that was previously held by Western companies, thanks to Novatek. Russian businesses are demonstrating their technological expertise in Latin America using Russian concrete gravity base structures for Arctic LNG 2. The first train is expected to be operational by the end of the year.
REUTERS By Vladimir, Soldatkin, June 9, 2023 / Editing by Germán & Co
MOSCOW, June 9 (Reuters) - Russia's largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) Novatek (NVTK.MM) last year offered technology to build a plant to produce the gas from Argentina's Vaca Muerta field, a highly-placed source familiar with the proposal said, though the talks have since broken off.
The source said that Novatek proposed to help implement Argentina's plans to build an LNG plant to liquefy gas from Vaca Muerta, a massive shale formation in western Argentina seen as key to boosting the South American country's gas supplies and reducing the need for pricey imports.
According to the source, Novatek told Argentina's government it has developed a unique
infrastructure for construction of LNG plants based on concrete gravity base structures (GBS) in shallow offshore waters.
"There are no negotiations (with Novatek)," Argentina's energy secretariat said in response to the query about the offer by the Russian company.
Novatek did not reply to a request for comment.
In September, Argentina's state oil company YPF (YPFD.BA) and its Malaysian counterpart, Petronas, inked a deal to build a major LNG plant and a pipeline to transport the fuel.
Novatek's approach indicates Moscow's ability to develop, at least partially, its own large-scale LNG-producing technology, which had been exclusively provided in Russia by Western companies before they withdrew from the country last year due to the conflict in Ukraine.
It also highlights Russian businesses' drive to expand their global reach as far as Latin America after President Vladimir Putin urged business to pivot away from the West.
Russian concrete gravity base structures will be used in Novatek's Arctic LNG 2 plant in Russia. The first technological line, or train, of the plant is due to start production at the end of this year.
Novatek said in its offer to Argentina that the technology allows for construction of one LNG train with production capacity of 7 million tonnes per year within 2.5-3 years, according to the source.
The Vaca Muerta formation, in Argentina's Patagonian south, is the size of Belgium. It holds the world's second-largest shale gas reserves and the fourth-largest shale oil deposits.
It could become a key global supplier of gas as the world looks for alternatives to Russia, whose energy industry has been heavily sanctioned over its military campaign in Ukraine.
The LNG project promises future dollar earnings for the cash-strapped South American country even though the gains are still years out. Growing production from Vaca Muerta should also allow for less reliance on costly gas imports over time.
Image: Spiegel / Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv / Editing by Germán & CoExclusive: Analysis of President Vladimir Putin's Stay as a KGB Agent in Dresden, Germany: Is it all true?
Over several years, a discourse has been widely circulated regarding the President of Russia. In the 1980s, Vladimir Putin held a position as a junior officer within the KGB, a prominent intelligence agency of the Soviet Union. The individual was tasked with conducting covert operations while deployed in East Germany. His responsibilities included executing covert activities. According to the reports, he sustained communication with leftist militants linked to the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany. He furnished them with armaments and directives during his tenure at the agency's station in Dresden.
Russian President’s Years in Germany…
Spiegel By Sven Röbel und Wolfgang Tietze, 07.06.2023For a number of years, a story has been circulating about the Russian president. It goes like this: During the 1980s, Vladimir Putin was on a top-secret mission in East Germany as a young officer in the feared Soviet secret service agency KGB. From the agency's station in Dresden, he purportedly maintained contacts with left-wing terrorists belonging the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, supplying them with both weapons and instructions.
Putin is said to have repeatedly led conspiratorial meetings between the KGB, the East German Ministry for State Security (the notorious Stasi) and the RAF, at which attacks on prominent targets were also discussed – such as the assassination of Deutsche Bank CEO Alfred Herrhausen.
The narrative of Putin's alleged RAF connections found its way into two standard international works on the Kremlin leader's life – including British journalist Catherine Belton's bestseller "Putin's People." The same informant apparently served as the source in both works: an alleged former RAF member who was granted anonymity.
For quite some time, experts puzzled over who the source for the RAF story could be. Now, it seems, the mystery has been resolved: The person in question is believed to be Dietmar C. from the town of Dillingen in the western state of Saarland.
That fact could prove to be a serious problem for the credibility of the Putin narrative. It turns out that C., now 71, has been many things in his eventful life: a hippie, a bank robber, a key source of questionable revelations – but he was very clearly never a member of the RAF. Instead, he is considered a notorious fabulist and has several previous convictions, including for making false statements.
Purported RAF insider Dietmar C. in 2001 in a court in Budapest, HungaryImage: Tibor Rozsahegy / picture-alliance / dpa / Editing by Germán & CoThe case highlights a broader problem with some of the reporting that has been conducted into Putin's KGB past. Ever since the former spy ascended to become Russia’s leader, researchers, journalists and biographers have been combing through his years of service in East Germany from 1985 to 1990. In the eagerness to find new details, fact and fiction have sometimes blurred, and somewhere along the line, the man from Leningrad gained the reputation for being a Soviet super agent.
The literature is full of speculation about Hollywood-like special missions in which Putin is alleged to have been involved: a secret operation to overthrow the East German government; the establishment of a network of agents made up of defected Stasi employees; or the blackmail of a toxic materials researcher, on whom pornographic material was to be planted.
Even today, there is no convincing evidence for these stories. In the Stasi files that have been made public so far, there are only a few pages in which Putin is even mentioned at all. They cover rather banal events such as birthday greetings, administrative matters or German-Soviet friendship evenings, captured in slightly faded photographs.
The fact that there is so little about him in the files itself provides grounds for speculation: Were Putin's assignments so explosive that all traces were consistently erased from official documents? Or was he actually just performing routine work that was simply too trivial to be archived by the Stasi?
A collection of slightly yellowed photos from the 1980s is stored in the Stasi archives. They document internal festivities, receptions and award ceremonies of the Stasi district administration in Dresden. Some of the photos show a pale man whose face is now world-famous.
Vladimir Putin worked in the Dresden station of the Soviet KGB secret servicefrom 1985 to 1990. Daily life at the local station wasn't all that glamorous.
But there were moments, occasional celebrations that were also attended by colleagues from East Germany's State Security (the Stasi).
One of the undated snapshots shows the future Russian leader in a crowd at the buffet.
From Putin's time in Dresden, it is said the he had a special appreciation for the local beer, Radeberger, which was difficult for normal citizens of East Germany to obtain.
Putin's fondness for the tipple apparently didn't go unnoticed by East Germany's Ministry of State Security.
According to a handwritten note in the margin of an internal memo, Dresden Stasi chief Horst Böhm not only had his colleague Putin presented with flowers and a card for his 35th birthday, but also with a beer mug.
According to Horst Jehmlich, the chief aide to the last Dresden Stasi chief, Putin played only a minor role in the neighboring KGB station. Putin was more of an "errand boy" at the regional KGB station, Jehmlich told DER SPIEGEL. Although Putin sometimes signed requests to the Ministry of State Security (MfS), important matters were always clarified personally by the Soviet head of the KGB station – with the help of an MfS interpreter and without Putin.
Putin's former office neighbor at the KGB office in Dresden echoed Jehmlich's view. He said that his colleague was "a complete conformist" whose work consisted mainly of sifting through an endless stream of applications to visit family in West Germany or searching for potential informants among foreign students at the University of Dresden.
None of that served to diminish speculation about explosive special missions, especially since Putin himself has never made any explicit statements about the work he performed in East Germany. The legend of having been a top spy shrouded in secrecy isn't likely one that he finds particularly bothersome.
The wildest story to date – that of Putin's purported involvement in RAF terror – first surfaced in the 2012 biography "The Man Without a Face" by Masha Gessen. In it, an alleged "former RAF member" describes how members of the extreme left-wing terrorist group "occasionally came to Dresden for training sessions" and brought their contact Putin gifts from the West – a Grundig short-wave receiver, for example, or a stolen Blaupunkt car stereo. "He always wanted to have things," the informant told Gessen. The interview took place in Bavaria in August 2011.
Apparently the same anonymous source is quoted in Catherine Belton's 2020 bestseller "Putin's People." "We met there (in Dresden) about a half a dozen times," the alleged former terrorist claims in that book. According to the source, the RAF people would travel to East Germany by train and were picked up at the train station by Stasi agents in a Soviet-made sedan and driven to a safe house in Dresden, where, Putin and another KGB colleague would join them to discuss terrorist operations. "They would never give us instructions directly," the informant said. "They would just say: 'We heard you were planning this, how do you want to do it?'" Putin and his KGB colleague, the source said, would then make "suggestions" to the RAF fighters for attacks and sometimes recommended "other targets."
Citing her source, Belton writes that Putin "would be among the leaders" in these secret meetings in Dresden. Even a Stasi general, who was allegedly also present, would obey his orders, according to the source. At the end, the source said, the terrorists handed over their wish lists for weapons, which would then allegedly be delivered to secret locations by KGB agents and picked up by RAF members.
According to Belton's source, the terror of the RAF was at the time a "key part of KGB attempts to disrupt and destabilize" West Germany. The assassination of Herrhausen, which was allegedly also initiated by Putin and the KGB, also allegedly served this purpose. The head of Deutsche Bank was murdered in the Frankfurt suburb of Bad Homburg on November 30, 1989, in a bomb attack that remains unsolved to this day.
The bombed-out sedan of murdered Deutsche Bank CEO Alfred Herrhausen in Bad Homburg, Germany, in 1989Image: Kai-Uwe Wärner / picture-alliance / dpa / Editing by Germán & Co"I know this target came from Dresden," Belton's alleged RAF informant claimed."They were using us to disrupt, destabilize and sow chaos in the West." Belton doesn’t provide any further witnesses or evidence of a KGB background to the attack on Herrhausen in her book. In a footnote, she merely refers to the "former RAF member" she spoke to in March 2018.
By then, the story of Putin, the RAF and the secret meetings in Dresden was already circulating on the Internet, on the "Putinism" blog, for example. But in contrast to the source cited by Gessen and Belton, the alleged RAF member was named on the blog: Dietmar C.
Gessen left unanswered questions from DER SPIEGEL as to whether the alleged RAF witness had in fact been Dietmar C. Belton stated that she would not comment in order to protect her source. She said revealing any information would be a violation of agreements made to ensure the safety of the person in question. She did, however, say that she had viewed documents that "gave credence to this person's account." But Belton did not state which documents those were.
The source of the alleged RAF-KGB connection was treated less discreetly in the biography "Vladimir V. Putin" by German journalist Thomas Fasbender, published in 2022. In it, he quotes Dietmar C. by his full name. The book states that the source now has "no reservations about revealing his identity." The book claims that the source is the same person who had spoken to Gessen and Belton.
According to Fasbender, in a meeting with Dietmar C. in August 2021, the source again described the RAF meetings with Putin in Dresden and embellished them with additional details. He also claimed that the clandestine meetings were attended not only by Putin, but also by Sergei Ivanov, who later became Russia's defense minister. In addition, he alleged that terrorists from the French group Action Directe and the head of the Dresden Stasi district administration, Major General Horst Böhm, had also been present at times. And that Putin, who answered to the name "Vova" at the time, would sometimes"send him to fetch coffee."
Fasbender writes, however, that Dietmar C. had never been a member of the RAF, instead merely offering the group occasional assistance - as a French interpreter, for example. Readers don't have to believe Dietmar C.'s account, the author writes, but his story is "no less plausible than others."
Asked by DER SPIEGEL about the credibility of his source, Fasbender says that Dietmar C. "did not give the impression of being a storyteller or an impostor." However, this does not mean that "every statement he makes should be taken at face value."
Whereas Fasbender describes Dietmar C. as a "man with a left-wing radical past and a colorful life in the haze of terrorism" and the secret services, the German security authorities have no knowledge of the man's connections to the RAF, the KGB or the Stasi. Reporting conducted by DER SPIEGEL found that neither the Federal Prosecutor's Office, which is responsible for terror investigations, nor the counterintelligence unit of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, nor the Stasi archives have obtained any such information.
The last head of the Stasi Department XXII/8, which was responsible for surveilling the RAF on the orders of Minister for State Security Erich Mielke, also told DER SPIEGEL that he had never heard of the man.
Dietmar C.'s name is more familiar to the West German judiciary. Starting in the 1970s, he criminal record consistently grew, including crimes such as embezzlement, theft, coercion and violations of the Weapons Act. He served multiple prison sentences, and as recently as 2017, a Bavarian district court sentenced him to a fine for assault. According to the verdict, his federal criminal record contained "12 entries" at the time.
In addition to his criminal career, Dietmar C. also liked to share spectacular stories – often putting himself in the leading role. For example, he once told the investigative journalist Jürgen Roth a completely different version of his biography. In contrast to the story he told Fasbender, according to which Dietmar C. was a member of an anarchist "fighting association" in southern Germany in the early 1970s, where he allegedly came into contact with the RAF, he apparently told Roth that, "in the early 1970s," he had fought as a "mercenary" in Africa, in what was then Rhodesia.
In fact, according to a once close companion, Dietmar C. didn't fight for the RAF or in Rhodesia at the time – but served in Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr. He reportedly trained as a medic, stole equipment and deserted. The District Court in Marburg, Germany, in fact, convicted Dietmar C. of desertion in December 1972.
A few months later, in May 1973, the then-21-year-old was on trial again. As his former acquaintance told DER SPIEGEL, Dietmar C. belonged to a hippie group in Saarland that dreamed of emigrating to Canada and founding a rural commune. They planned to obtain the necessary money by robbing banks, but the group got caught. A juvenile court in Saarbrücken sentenced Dietmar C. to three years in juvenile detention.
Dietmar C. Also Claims To Have Met Osama Bin Laden
There's also another story where the facts don't quite match up with the timeline. According to Jürgen Roth's 2016 book "Schmutzige Demokratie" (Dirty Democracy), at the beginning of the 1980s, Dietmar C. spent "several years in Afghanistan" supporting the mujahedeen "in the fight against the Soviet troops." The book states that the man from Saarland had also met "several times" with Osama bin Laden, whom he had experienced as a very "calm personality."
The files tell a different story: Rather than having fought for "several years" in Afghanistan, Dietmar C. served another prison sentence in Germany in the early 1980s. According to the former acquaintance, Dietmar C. and an accomplice robbed a bank in Konz in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in December 1980. In September 1981, the Trier Regional Court sentenced C. to six and a half years in prison for predatory extortion. He landed another entry in his criminal record in October 1987 for "negligent driving without a license."
According to the files, Dietmar C. spent much of the 1980s in custody or under the watchful eye of the police, judiciary and parole supervisors. Just how he managed to find time for the Afghan mujahedeen, KGB agents and RAF terrorists in between remains his secret. An order of summary punishment issued by judicial officials in the city of Mönchengladbach also raise doubts about his credibility. He was slapped with a suspended sentence there in May 1995 for giving false testimony.
Shortly thereafter, in 1996, Dietmar C. hit the headlines as the suspected supplier of a hand grenade found at the scene of the kidnapping of Hamburg millionaire Jan Philipp Reemtsma. He was later arrested in Hungary on other charges and sentenced to a total term of imprisonment of 11 years for illegal explosives trafficking and aiding and abetting counterfeiting, among other infractions.
A Known Neo-Nazi in the Service of the KGB?
C. was extradited to Germany and has been living for the past several years in Bavaria. Today, he is a member of the board of directors of an association he founded himself, for which he works as a "legal adviser." In the official registry files, he does business under the name "Dr. Dietmar C."
It remains unclear how Dietmar C. might have obtained his academic title – he left written questions from DER SPIEGEL about all the events unanswered. When contacted by telephone, he admitted that he spoke with Masha Gessen, but not, he claimed, about trips to East Germany by the RAF. When asked if he had spoken to Catherine Belton about Putin’s time in Dresden, he replied: "About Putin in Dresden? No." Then about what? "I don't want to say anything about that. Ms. Belton should explain." He also claimed never to have spoken to the journalist Fasbender about the RAF taking trips to East Germany. Dietmar C. claimed to have no recollection of his written authorization for the book passages in question and the permission to mention his name, which DER SPIEGEL has obtained. He also said he didn't want to comment on the question of whether he himself had been with Putin in Dresden. Dietmar C. did, however, attach great importance to one thing: That he "at no time was a member of the RAF."
The supposed Dresden connection between the RAF and the KGB isn’t the only narrative that captured the imagination of biographers, journalists and Putin scholars. The reports range from Putin’s purported secret spy network to a known neo-Nazi whom the KGB man is said to have handled as an informant. There is no evidence for any of these episodes in the Stasi files that have been made public so far.
The titillating stories first began circulating at the beginning of 2000, when Putin had just become Russian president and hordes of reporters went in search of clues about his past. Britain’s Sunday Times reported on a "ring of 15 agents" that Putin had allegedly built. The Sächsische Zeitung newspaper wrote that among the secret inductees was the notorious Dresden-based neo-Nazi Rainer Sonntag, who was shot dead in 1991. And in the German daily Die Welt, one could read about an East German medical doctor on whom Putin's agents allegedly wanted to plant "pornography with young girls" in order to get him to feed false data about "chemical warfare" into a computer network.
Public broadcaster ZDF and the newsweekly Focus, meanwhile, also reported on a spy network, and the Reuters news agency made the story virtually official in May 2000. The spokesman for the Stasi records office, the news agency reported at the time, confirmed that Putin had set up an agent ring of former Stasi employees in 1990 to continue working for the Soviets after the end of East Germany.
However, the statement from the agency turned out to be false. In fact, the records office wrote the next day in a little-noticed "clarification" that it had neither knowledge nor documents "on the activities of the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin in Dresden."
The journalists from various media had based their reporting primarily on the information provided by a dismissed Stasi employee named Klaus Z., who operated under pseudonyms such as "Peter Ackermann" or "Michael Mannstein."
The now 66-year-old did not have a glittering career at the Stasi. In the early 1980s, he initially worked as a low-level employee in Department XV of the Dresden district administration before being transferred to the less prestigious Department VIII in 1988. There, according to his personnel file, he dealt with "conspiratorial residential area investigations," among other things. The following year, he was transferred again and took care of "technical security" at Stasi properties.
Confessions to West German Intelligence
His superiors were ambivalent about the young lieutenant: On the one hand, he was characterized by a "high level of commitment and maximum utilization of working time," but on the other hand, he tended to get lost in the thicket of information. Because he always strives to "clarify facts down to the smallest detail," the comrade quickly loses sight of the big picture, his superiors noted.
Klaus Z. also provided a large number of details to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution after the fall of communism. Following his release from the Stasi, he traveled in frustration to Cologne during Christmas 1990 and offered his services to West German counterintelligence. At this point, a good year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the interest of the agent hunters for internal information from the Dresden Stasi field office was no longer all that pronounced. Their interest increased only when the conversation turned to the "friends" from the KGB.
Klaus Z. reported on an alcohol-filled party at the end of 1984, to which he had been taken by his wife, who was working for the East German criminal police at the time. At the party, he claims to have met a certain Georg S., who went by the nickname "Schorsch." Officially, he was with Department K1 of the Volkspolizei, the East German national police, but in reality, Klaus Z. reported, he worked mainly for the KGB.
Klaus Z. claimed to have met a Russian named "Volodya" during Stasi company sporting activities in 1985, and that they visited each other privately and went on excursions. Later, Klaus Z. claimed to have learned that "Volodya" was a contact of "Schorsch" at the KGB. Once it became clear that East Germany was soon to disintegrate, he said, they jointly considered whether Z. could henceforth work for the KGB in a conspiratorial capacity, but the plan was never implemented, he said.
Following his Cologne Christmas confession in 1990, Klaus Z. started a new life in West Germany - including a stint as a security man at public broadcaster ZDF. He fell off the radar at that point - until he surprisingly contacted his case worker at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution again in 1999. He said he had recognized "Volodya" on television, the Soviet intelligence man he had once met in Dresden. The person in question was none other than the recently appointed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
KGB officer Putin's access badge for the Stasi officesImage: Stasi-Unterlagen-ArchivHe claimed the he had played sports and went on excursions with him during that time in Dresden. He said that the last time he had met Putin was in January 1990, in his apartment, together with another KGB man. He said he spontaneously pulled out some paper from the cupboard himself and wrote a handwritten declaration of commitment to the KGB. But no one ever responded to it, he said.
In order to find out more details about Putin's KGB past, Klaus Z. was apparently supposed to try to reactivate his old contacts with "Schorsch," who in the meantime was working as a private detective in Dresden. The operation ended in a fiasco. Klaus Z. shared his knowledge about "Volodya" not only with the Cologne counterintelligence, but also with various media, which then spun the information he fed them into juicy stories.
ZDF, for example, had Klaus Z. reenact a scene in which he signs a self-written declaration of allegiance to Putin. The newsmagazine Focus presented him as a top source of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which it reported had uncovered no less than"15 German scouts in Moscow's service" – and seemed almost clairvoyant when reporting: "We haven’t heard the last from Putin."
Today, Klaus Z. lives as a pensioner in a communist-era building in a rural part of the eastern state of Saxony. When contacted by DER SPIEGEL, he proposed meeting in a "Greek national restaurant with a convivial meeting atmosphere." There, he was happy to discuss DER SPIEGEL's questions.
During the more than three-hour interview, he admits that much of the information about Putin that various media have attributed to him over the years was not based on his own experience at all. He says he researched some connections afterwards, with the help of newspaper reports, for example, and that he "combined" others on the basis of statements by "Schorsch" or other former colleagues.
An Alleged Blackmail Attempt
Moreover, much is based on pure conjecture, such as the story about the toxic substance researcher's alleged blackmail attempt: "Schorsch" had only made "rudimentary" allusions to this, Klaus Z. now says, adding that he subsequently combined the account with other information. Through research in a chronicle of the Medical Academy of Dresden, he ultimately came across a professor with whom "Schorsch's" information might fit. However, Klaus Z. did not know whether the man was actually involved with chemical warfare agents, if he was to be blackmailed by the KGB or whether Putin had anything to do with it. It’s no longer possible to contact "Schorsch." He died in 2010
Similar to the story about the toxic substance researcher is the matter of Putin's purported 15-agent spy cell. According to Klaus Z., he had also learned about this through hints from "Schorsch" at a party in a beer tent in Dresden shortly before the fall of the Wall. He had spoken of "troops" in other districts in East Germany. Z. understood "Schorsch" as meaning covert KGB colleagues. He says he knew that there were five agents working in "Schorsch's" Dresden KGB group and had simply extrapolated the number.
The allegation disseminated by some media that the Dresden-based neo-Nazi Rainer Sonntag spied for Putin's KGB network is also based on a bold interpretation of Klaus Z.'s statements. Sonntag moved in the criminal circles during East German times and served time and again in prison between 1972 and 1981, including for theft and for plans to escape to the West. In November 1985, he was deported to West Germany, where he worked in Frankfurt's red-light district and joined the far-right scene. After the fall of the Wall, Sonntag returned to Dresden and got into a fight in the local red-light district. In 1991, a pimp shot him to death.
At the time, "Schorsch" confided in him, Klaus Z. now says, that Sonntag had once worked for him as a police informer. Z. says he then conducted elaborate research on his own before drawing up a "time line." However, to deduce from this that Sonntag worked for the KGB or for Putin requires an active imagination. According to Stasi documentation, Sonntag was only considered a "candidate" for an informant position as an "unofficial criminal police employee" at the end of the 1970s, without success. Because of "deconspiracy," meaning the candidate had somehow deliberately or inadvertently revealed his connection to the secret police, the recruitment was broken off. There are no references in the file to connections with "Schorsch" or with the KGB.
Few Stasi documents exist about Putin himself. Among the few papers in which his name appears is a letter from 1989 in which he, representing the KGB liaison officer actually in charge, asks the Dresden Stasi chief for help. The letter references a KGB informant named Gerhard B., whose phone had been cut off. The former captain of the East German criminal police was considered a security risk because of drunkenness and debts and had been removed from service. Putin now asked the Stasi on behalf of his boss to unblock the man's telephone line, because he continued to provide support to the KGB.
A request letter from the KGB to the Stasi, signed by Vladimir Putin "on behalf" of the actual liaison officer (from September 1989)Image: Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv / Editing by Germán & CoThe role of supplicant for a washed-up informer doesn't quite fit the image of a top spy. But it probably describes Putin's everyday life in the Dresden KGB station more aptly than the stories about terrorists and secret weapons caches.
In fact, things were far less glamorous in the Saxony KGB station than some non-fiction books claim. In one of the office's duties, Putin was quite familiar from his time as a secret service agent in Leningrad: the suppression of the opposition. As late as October 1989, Putin's superior, Major General Vladimir Shirokov, turned a student at Dresden Technical University in to the Stasi. "By means of the printer in his possession," the young man had duplicated an appeal from the democracy movement "New Forum" and distributed it among the students.
A few weeks later, the Wall fell and the communist Socialist Unity Party (SED) regime was history. On the evening of December 5, 1989, civil rights activists marched in front of the KGB station in Dresden's Angelika Strasse, where they came face to face with Soviet soldiers who were tasked with securing the area.
The scene provided the backdrop for the final myth about Putin's time in East Germany: According to one version, he heroically confronted the demonstrators, with a determined look and armed soldiers at his side. According to another version, a small man was standing at the entrance of the nearby Stasi headquarters, watching the spectacle from a safe distance.