Questions over report that shows Putin on old East German police ID

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- An old East Germany secret police identification bearing the name and image of Russian President Vladimir Putin turned up in a recent search of cold war-era documents, press reports said Tuesday.

The ID card suggests Putin, now 66, was a worker of the former East German secret service until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the document showed, as reported Tuesday by German media Bild.

The document was lying along with others in a category marked as belonging to the former regional administration of the Stasi police, in Dresden.

The document was dated 1985 and marked "Maj Vladimir Putin," The Guardian reported. Putin worked in Dresden as a Russian intelligence officer of the KGB during the 1980s, it added.

The Guardian report said the card would've made it easier for Putin to enter Stasi installations, but does not necessarily mean he worked for the East German secret police. It also said the Kremlin didn't confirm or deny the German press report.

"My guess is that in the Soviet era, the KGB and the Stasi were partners and for this reason one should not rule out they might have exchanged identification papers and passes," Peskov said Tuesday.

The Berlin wall divided the city in two -- with one part under control of the German Democratic Republic, a close ally of the Soviet Union, and the other controlled by the Western-aligned Federal Republic of Germany.

The wall, built in 1961, fell in November 1991, making it possible for the German nation to reunify a year later. Dozens of people died attempting to cross the wall in the decades it stood. Germany was split in two after World War II, when allied forces took control of half the nation.

The Stasi, formally known as Ministry for State Security, carried out repressive activities and spied on its citizens.