It’s believed Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent based in Dresden, East Germany who served in a menial capacity by which he and his colleagues “were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings” throughout the late ‘80s. So why the future president of Russia would’ve been anywhere near the Moscow summit in May/June 1988 — over 1,000 miles from his station — is unclear.

Consequently this well-known picture of President Reagan extending his hand to a local youngster while walking through Red Square alongside Mikhail Gorbachev with what appears to be the spitting image of a fresh-faced Vlad Putin on the left (disguised, perhaps, as a tourist) has baffled observers on both sides of the Atlantic for decades, not least including the man who took the picture.