The Finnish newspaper published a rare video of Putin from the early 1990s

On Sunday, the Finnish newspaper Yle published a selection of photos and videos with the participation of the current Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which he was captured on vacation in Finland in the early 1990s, when he was the head of the committee on external relations of the St. Petersburg City Hall.

“A unique home video shows how Putin spent his free time at a luxurious villa in the south of Finland during the collapse of the Soviet Union,” the publication prefaces its publication.

Yle draws attention to Putin’s clothes – “a light T-shirt and blue Adidas sports pants”, as well as to his disheveled hair.

“This is what Putin was like before he got rich: a bad windbreaker, a bad haircut, a bad sleeveless shirt,” quoted Luke Harding, an expert on Russia, journalist of The Guardian.

The video, which came into Yle’s possession, was shot in Finland during the May Day weekend in the early 1990s. The exact time is not mentioned.

The video shows Putin in a T-shirt and sweatpants playing ping-pong with his boss, the then mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, against two presumably security guards. The video also caught the moment when Putin, Sobchak and several other people are having dinner on the terrace.

The video, as Yle writes, was filmed at the representative villa of the Thomesto Group company, which conducted business in Russia. The place of action is the island of Torsø on the southern coast of Finland. The Finnish company Thomesto imported raw wood from Russia, “therefore, ties with the leaders of its eastern neighbor were vital for it,” the publication writes.

Yle does not name the source of the video, “because Putin’s reaction to the revelations of his personal life can be unpredictable.” The excerpt was previously published on YouTube, but it was quickly removed from there.

The publication also interviewed one of the Finnish businessmen who was at the villa during the visit of Sobchak and Putin. He said that he played ping-pong with Putin. The guests also fished during the visit. In one of the videos, Putin and Sobchak go on a boat together with the top manager of Thomesto. Apparently, Putin’s then-wife Lyudmila and his daughters attended the holiday.

In the video where Sobchak and Putin are having dinner, the mayor of St. Petersburg cuts a large piece of meat. “This should be put on television, show how the mayor is asking, gnawing on bones,” jokes Putin in the footage. “The group eats hot dogs and jokes about their gluttony, while people in their hometown suffer from a lack of food,” writes Yle. At the same time, the Finnish participant of the meeting notes that Putin behaved restrainedly, did not talk about “women and life” and almost did not drink alcohol.

“The ping-pong player, who wore slightly disheveled hair and baggy sweatpants, has since been able to improve his image thanks to unlimited money and power. The end result looks bleak,” Yle states, noting that now 71-year-old Putin “buys the most expensive fashionable clothes, which can only be bought with money, and does not even pretend to identify itself with ordinary people.”