| Porthole 29 Apr 22

“HE never smiled or spoke.”

If the name that popped into your head upon reading this assessment was President of Russia Vladimir Putin, you would be correct.

That was the evaluation of an Australian former cruise ship cabaret singer, who claimed to the Daily Mail Putin posed as a guard aboard Soviet-built cruise ship Aleksandr Pushkin to spy for the KGB during the Cold War.

The vessel, which last sailed for the now-defunct Cruise & Maritime Voyages as Marco Polo, was in 1985 chartered by British line CTC to sail from Europe to Australia, with her Soviet crew.

The singer said the “scowling, stony-faced security guard” she believes to have been the future Russian despot used to stalk her back to her cabin.

“I’d open the cabin door and I’d turn around and wave and smile and say thank you very much,” the singer described.

“He never smiled, he never spoke to me, not a single word.”

While the singer remains the only source for Putin’s supposed whereabouts aboard Aleksandr Pushkin, a fellow performer also told the Daily Mail it was an open secret the ship was crawling with KGB officers – a role in which Putin served from 1975 to 1991.

She also remarked: “if only we had known what he had planned for the world, we could have tossed the bastard overboard and done everyone a favour!”