Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said he was forced to moonlight as a taxi driver due to the economic crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago.
Mr Putin lamented the socialist power’s demise in 1991 as the end of what he called “historical Russia”, in comments released by state TV which are likely to cause further speculation about his foreign policy intentions.
Critics of the president have accused him of planning to recreate the Soviet Union and of contemplating an attack on Ukraine – a notion the Kremlin has dismissed as fearmongering.
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“It was a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union,” Mr Putin said of the break-up, in comments aired on Sunday as part of a documentary film called Russia. New History, the RIA state news agency reported.
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“We turned into a completely different country. And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost,” he said.
The president added that 25 million people in newly independent countries suddenly found themselves cut off from Russia, in what he described as “a major humanitarian tragedy”.
For the first time, he also spoke about 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,” Mr Putin said.
The 69-year-old, who served in the Soviet-era KGB, has previously called the collapse of the union, which was ruled from Moscow, the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
However, his new comments show how he viewed it specifically as a setback for Russian power.
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Ukraine was one of the 15 Soviet republics and was described by Mr Putin, in an article published on the Kremlin website this year, as being an integral part of Russian history and culture.
This view is rejected by Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, as a politically motivated and over-simplified version of history.
The West has accused Russia of gathering tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine in preparation for a possible attack as soon as January – but the Kremlin has rejected this claim, saying it has no plans to do so.
The UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, have warned Moscow of serious consequences and costs if it attacked the country.