Putin congratulates his former KGB chief on his 90th birthday

Baku. 8 May. REPORT.AZ/ Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited former KGB representative to the Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Lazar Matveyev, who used to be his chief when Putin worked at the KGB office in Dresden in the 1980s. Report informs, the president took advantage of the opportunity to congratulate his former chief on his 90th birthday.

Putin was accompanied by two people who were his colleagues during his years in the GDR - Nikolai Tokarev, who now heads the state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft, and Sergey Chemezov, CEO of the Rostec state corporation.

he president wished Matveyev a happy birthday and also congratulated him on the upcoming Victory Day. Putin presented his former chief with a presidential watch and an issue of the Pravda newspaper published on the day of Matveyev’s birth in 1927.
According to the information available on the Kremlin website, in 1985-1990, Vladimir Putin served at KGB’s intelligence office in Dresden, East Germany. "Over the course of his service, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and to the position of senior assistant to the head of the department.