In 1992, an unremarkable 39-year-old ex-KGB officer found hims | Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

In 1992, an unremarkable 39-year-old ex-KGB officer found himself leading a municipal committee in his native St. Petersburg.

His name was Vladimir Putin. Thirty years later, he rules an increasingly closed Russia that most recently shocked the world by invading Ukraine.

Putin and his associates featured in various corruption scandals that frequently swirled around the committee.

Putin’s committee men later went on to become key allies to the president and occupy influential government posts.

One of them runs Gazprom, the country’s state-owned gas giant, another is in charge of the organization of elections, another heads Russia’s largest oil company.

A new investigative series by by Current Time & Radio Svoboda examines how it all started for Putin and his associates, including details never seen before by the public eye.

One scheme involved what was called at the time the largest single seizure of cocaine in history.

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