54 MAY-JUNE 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL he worked as a foreign relations aide in the Leningrad State University rector’s office, where he undoubtably came to the attention of Professor Sobchak. He has traveled to the U.S. with Sobchak. He [Putin] says he speaks no English.” Putin’s 1990 visit to the United States attracted little attention. The consulate issued him a visa as a member of Sobchak’s 15-person delegation that came at the invitation of St. Petersburg College in Florida. The delegation also visited Washington, D.C., where they met with President George H.W. Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, and members of Congress, and Sobchak spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on October 29, 1990. I have found no specific references to Putin’s participation in the Washington meetings, although as Sobchak’s foreign policy adviser, he was almost certainly present. Like hiding his knowledge of English in the early 1990s, Putin did not seem to want anyone to know what he knew. He never mentioned his U.S. visits to the Western press until 2000, in an interview with David Frost, when he said only: “I have twice been to the United States on very short visits, on business,” without elaborating. In the months immediately following the 1991 Moscow coup attempt and the impending collapse of the USSR, a succession of senior U.S. officials visited the Soviet Union to show support for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and promote U.S. investment as privatization increased. Putin participated in all the visits to St. Petersburg. When Secretary of State James Baker visited that September, and the consulate was tasked with providing biographies of guests at a dinner Sobchak was hosting, it repeated earlier reporting and added: “Putin appears to be in his late thirties [he was 38]. He speaks no English. We have no information on Mrs. Putin.” In a telegram the next day the consulate filled in the birth date (1952), his degree date (1975), and that he was elected to the Leningrad City Council in April 1990, adding: “He is a legal specialist. Sobchak treats Putin as his key assistant on anything international, but Putin has grated on some foreigners here.” The draft schedule showed Putin at the working dinner hosted by Secretary Baker for Sobchak. Not all of Baker’s party were included; those left out included future CIA Director Career Ambassador William Burns and future Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili. Privatization and Business Potential Interest by U.S. businesses in potential investments in Russia A snippet of a 1993 cable sent by the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg to the State Department in Washington, D.C. This cable and others cited were declassified as part of a systematic review of all cables after 25 years by the State Department Bureau of Administration’s Office of Classification Policy and Declassification Review. DAMIAN LEADER DECLASSIFIED
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