Fact Check: Was Vladimir Putin in Moscow Photo With Reagan and Gorbachev?

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who helped bring an end to the Cold War, somberly reminds how far Russian-American relations have sunk in recent decades.

News that Russia's President Vladimir Putin will snub the former Soviet president's funeral (which allegedly will not be a state service) may indicate how far the leadership wishes to distance itself from Gorbachev's brand of Western cooperation and diplomacy.

However, a photo recently shared online claims to put Putin within shoulder distance of both Gorbachev and then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the pair whose negotiations led to the eventual dismantling of the Soviet Union.

The Claim

A photo was posted on Twitter on August 31, 2022, alongside a claim that it pictured Putin in 1988 in Moscow's Red Square with Reagan. Gorbachev can be seen in the same photo.

The Facts

Reagan visited Moscow in 1988 for a summit meeting with his Soviet counterpart Gorbachev. During the visit, the pair walked through the streets of the Russian capital and its landmarks as journalists swarmed around them.

One of the destinations visited by the two leaders was Moscow's Red Square, where a crowd of onlookers gathered. Among them was a small group of what appeared to be tourists asking the leaders questions on a number of political matters. It seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be an organized propaganda opportunity.

A photo taken during this encounter of Regan shaking the hand of a Russian youngster shows a man in the background, who appears to have some small resemblance to Putin.

The photo has been shared for a number of years. Its photographer, Pete Souza, claimed in a 2009 NPR interview that it was indeed the current Russian president.

Souza, a White House photographer well-known for capturing former U.S. President Barack Obama's two terms, claimed a Soviet Secret Service agent told him that the "tourists" were "all KGB families."

Souza later added: "And as soon as you see the photo you go, oh, my gosh, it really is him."

However, in 2021, Souza reposted the photo on Instagram along with a detailed description of the encounter in which he admitted that saying Putin was in the picture was a "big mistake; I never should have said that, because in fact it had never been verified.⁣⁣"

Souza said in the same post that after the interview with NPR in 2009, the Kremlin denied that it was Putin.

Although it has not been completely verified, the balance of evidence does pour cold water over the theory that it was the future Russian president.

In 1988, Putin was working as a KGB agent in Dresden, East Germany. A passport of Putin's found in Germany many years later not only confirms his KGB involvement, but shows the physical dissimilarities he had to the man in the Red Square photo.

While not beyond the realm of possibility, it would have been unlikely for Putin, one among hundreds of Soviet KGB agents, to have been pulled from East Germany to attend Reagan's visit and potentially spy on the president.

As you can see from video footage of the trip below, the man can be seen standing among well-wishers and tourists as the group of politicians arrived (around the 17 minute mark).

The man is seen nowhere else in the footage. While we cannot rely on this as an argument to debunk the authenticity of the photo entirely, it's another reason to doubt the claim attached to it.

If Putin were indeed tasked with spying on Regan, it would have been odd for him to have remained hidden up to the visit in Red Square, especially as at one point he made himself front and center of a crowd waiting for the U.S. leader.

Again, this speculation can't be used to debunk the claim entirely, but it does make the idea that Putin was there, let alone spying on Regan, more dubious.

Many of the versions of the photo shared on social media are compressed, smaller, or otherwise of lower quality than the original. The fidelity loss may well contribute to the impression that Putin is in the shot.

However, looking at a higher quality version of the photo, while there are similarities it does appear that the man isn't quite a Putin lookalike.

This is the least tangible of the clues, but seeing the higher quality version arguably weakens the notion that the man is Putin.

Indeed, even looking at a side profile of Putin and the man in the photo shows that, while somewhat alike, features like their nose and jaw appear to not be identical.

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However, as it is, the photo has not been officially verified. We don't know who the man in the photo is, why he was there in Red Square, or where he came from.

Although the Kremlin has previously denied the authenticity of the photo, this is not quite enough to truly say whether or not the man in the picture is Putin (as unlikely as it seems).

Until conclusive evidence emerges, we can only say that it is very unlikely that the man in the picture is the Russian president.

Newsweek has reached out for comment to the Kremlin, which has previously refuted the claim, responding to The Guardian's inquiry.

The Ruling

Unverified.

While the photographer who took the photo originally claimed the man was Putin, he has since reneged that assertion.

The Kremlin has previously denied Putin is in the photo and given where the now Russian president was thought to be stationed at the time, it seems odd that he would have been brought to Moscow to spy on this largely ceremonial (and public) meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev.

Clearer versions of the 1988 photo also support the notion that the two men are different, but until we can verify otherwise who the man in the photo is, or where Putin was on the day of the photo, we cannot completely rule out the possibility.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team