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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Retired KGB Colonel: Putin Was Only A Major |
| 2015-04-04 |
| Vladimir Putin is merely posing as a lieutenant colonel. The Russian president also oversaw war crimes in Chechnya and helped frame a prosecutor-general to derail a probe into massive Kremlin corruption. These are some of the claims made by Oleg Kalugin, a former high-ranking KGB officer and fierce critic of Putin in an interview with RFE/RL. According to Kalugin, Putin was "just a major" in the KGB, which he resigned from in 1991. "He could have become a lieutenant colonel a year later but he didn't," he tells RFE/RL. Kalugin, who lives in the United States and has been sentenced by Russia to 15 years in prison for treason, says Putin's 1998 appointment as director of the KGB's main successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), actually violated guidelines stipulating that only a general can hold this post. He also confirms speculation that the FSB was behind a sex-tape scandal that ended the career of Yury Skuratov, Russia's combative prosecutor-general in the late 1990s. More at the link... |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #7 Hitler was only a corporal. |
| Posted by: KBK 2015-04-04 13:34 |
| #6 barak was only a community organizer |
| Posted by: newc 2015-04-04 13:30 |
| #5 well, I was a Major and I thought I did a lot of the dirty work the telephone colonels didn't want to do. Some LTCs tend to want to hover around the CP and they send the Majors out into the bush to see what's really going on. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2015-04-04 11:27 |
| #4 'Iron Majors' can be very effective. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-04-04 04:58 |
| #3 The fate of an exile is bitter. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-04-04 04:15 |
| #2 I'll take a KGB Major over a community organizer any day. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2015-04-04 00:29 |
| #1 Yokay, I'll bite, POTUS Obama was what ???? rank? Bear in mind that I have personal knowledge of Obama, just as I do or did wid Osama, E-T-A-L. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-04-04 00:12 |