MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the collapse of the Soviet Union spelled the end of "historical Russia", revealing he drove a taxi to make ends meet following the USSR's fall. Putin, a former agent of the Soviet Union's KGB security services, who has previously lamented the USSR's fall, said the disintegration three decades ago remains a "tragedy" for "most citizens".
Putin's comments, released by state TV on Sunday, are likely to further fuel speculation about his foreign policy intentions among critics, who accuse him of planning to recreate the Soviet Union and of contemplating an attack on Ukraine, a notion the Kremlin has dismissed as fear-mongering.
"It was a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the USSR," Putin said of the 1991 breakup, in comments aired on Sunday as part of a documentary film called "Russia. New History", the RIA news agency reported. "We turned into a completely different country. And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost," said Putin, saying 25 million Russian people in newly independent countries suddenly found themselves cut off from Russia, part of what he called "a major humanitarian tragedy".
Putin also described for the first time how he was affected personally by the tough economic times that followed the Soviet collapse, when Russia suffered double-digit inflation. "Sometimes (I) had to moonlight and drive a taxi. It is unpleasant to talk about this but, unfortunately, this also took place," the president said.
A loyal servant of the Soviet Union, Putin was dismayed when it fell apart, once calling the collapse "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century". Putin, has previously called the collapse of the Soviet Union as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.
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