At the end of the zero, the Internet blew up an archival photograph captured by Ronald Reagan in the Soviet capital in May 1988. According to the media, in the left side of the picture you can see the future president of Russia. Check if this is so.

The source of the sensation has become interview, which was given in January 2009 by the American National Public Radio Pete Souza - the official photographer of the White House under Reagan and Obama. The sauce accompanied the 40th President of the United States during his official visit to the USSR in 1988. According to the photographer, walking along with Mikhail Gorbachev in Red Square, Reagan met a group of tourists who bombarded the American with tricky issues on the topic of human rights in the United States. The sauce then did not believe that ordinary tourists could be so savvy, and later an employee of the special services confirmed his guess: these were KGB agents with their families.

The sauce added that he has a photograph of this episode in his archive. And, the most interesting, one of the “tourists” in the picture, a fair -haired man with a camera on his neck is none other than Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, then an ordinary KGB agent. If you believe the sauce, other people came across this discovery, and it received confirmation.

Let's try to verify this statement from several sides. First, we turn to the official biographies President of Russia:

“In 1985-1990, Vladimir Putin worked in the GDR. He served in a territorial scout in Dresden. By length of service, he was increased in rank to Lieutenant Colonel and in position to the senior assistant to the head of the department. And in 1989 he was awarded the bronze medal "For outstanding merits to the National People's Army of the GDR."

It turns out that in order to play the role of an inquisitive tourist, the 35-year-old intelligence agent would have to interrupt an important foreign mission and, as a result, light up in numerous pictures.

Secondly, let's evaluate the similarity of a man in a photo with other portraits of Putin of that time.

As you can see, in a photograph taken no later than 1984 (this year Putin was already a major, but here he has captain’s shoulder straps), the future president is already clearly not such a rich hair as a mysterious man in the 1988 picture. The difference is even more clearly visible in the photo of 1985. In addition, the difference in the shape of a nose and lips is striking.

Russian political analyst and author of books about Putin Andrei Piontkovsky He thinks Such a discovery by “nonsense” does not believe in its truth. According to unconfirmed data, a similar opinion (“this is not him”) was expressed by the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

And finally, again, again, we turn to the author of the sensation of Pete Suze, only a model of 2017. Here is a fragment from his interview with Esquire magazine:

“No, I'm not sure. This photograph entered the book that I wrote after Reagan's presidency. Ten years later, I received an email from some man who, as it seemed, understands history. He explained why it was Putin. During the publication of the book, this did not occur to me. There was no Putin in these parts then, right? But this guy gave a good argument in favor of what it was he: we knew for sure that the so -called "tourists" are KGB agents with families.

It became interesting to me, and I turned to the Reagan library, as well as the National Security Council at the White House. <...> In the Reagan library, they could not give a confident answer, they did not know how to check it. Someone from the National Security Council answered me: "It could be it, but we are not sure."

In 2009, I gave an interview to NPR, and this topic surfaced. And by my mistake, everything sounded as if I am sure: this is Vladimir Putin, while in fact there was no specific evidence. So I don't know. This is still a mystery to me. But the Russians deny that it is he. ”

Thus, not a single convincing certificate in confirmation of the sensational find. Almost certainly a person in the photo is not Vladimir Putin.