3
" called the commander, “You know, Anatoly Aleksandrovich is unable to come. He is sick.” “Really? Alright, well, thanks for telling me.” Two weeks later, I met the commander, and he said to me, insulted, “So he was sick, huh?” It turned out he had seen Sobchak meeting Pugacheva at the airport on television and that he had gone to her concert. And then he made an unkind remark about Lyudmila Borisovna, although she had nothing to do with it. “So he has time to meet with those . . . even when he’s sick. And he has no time to be involved with government business?” When Sobchak flew off to Paris, where were "
― Vladimir Putin , First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President
7
" Have you read the things that were published in Moskovskiye Novosti and Ogonyok in those days? For instance, General Kalugin’s exposures?10 Kalugin is a traitor. I saw Kalugin during my time in Leningrad when he was deputy head of the Directorate. He was an absolute loafer. A loafer, perhaps, but he remembers you. He doesn’t remember anything. He does remember, and he says that from the point of view of the intelligence service, you worked in a province and had nothing to show for your performance. Oh, he doesn’t remember a thing. He couldn’t remember me. I had no contact with him, nor did I meet him. It is I who remembers him, because he was a big boss and everybody knew him. As to whether he knew me, there were hundreds of us. "
― Vladimir Putin , First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President
10
" They invited a large investor, Coca-Cola, to take over a plot of land in Pulkovo Heights and install high-capacity power and communications cables, hoping that other companies would follow suit. It worked. After Coca-Cola developed their piece of land, Gillette came, then Wrigley, and then some pharmaceutical companies. An economic zone thus took shape within the city, where total investment now exceeds half a billion dollars. Furthermore, with the Committee’s encouragement, the city’s infrastructure began to be modernized to create the conditions necessary for successful business. The first major deal that Putin supported was the completion of a fiber-optic cable to Copenhagen. This project had been initiated back in the Soviet era but never completed. Now the efforts were successful, providing St. Petersburg with world-class international telephone connections. "
― Vladimir Putin , First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President
