But with roots in the Soviet Union's KGB secret police, allegations of state-sanctioned killings and close ties to the president, it faces questions about its true nature and ambitions.

Vladimir Putin was 33 when he received this Stasi ID card A Stasi ID pass used by Vladimir Putin when he was a Soviet spy in former East Germany has been found in the Stasi secret police archive ...

KGB-Soviet political police Abbreviations of ... the name for the tsarist era secret police; others called it "the organs." During WWII the NKVD changed its name briefly to NKGB.