Daily Times

SAINT PETERSBURG: Rounding a corner in central Saint Petersburg with a group in tow, Georgy Rusanov stops in front of the grey building of the city’s oldest maternity hospital – the first attraction on his Vladimir Putin walking tour.

“This is where Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952,” he announces to the small crowd, a mix of curious Russians and a Russian-American couple.

“Volodya was not a model child,” Rusanov continues using the diminutive version of Vladimir, to giggles from his audience, as he walks along Baskov Street, the stomping ground of the Russian president in his early years.

Saint Petersburg is known for its White Nights when the sun never fully sets, gilded palaces and elegant parks, but the 63-year-old Russian leader and native of Russia’s second largest city has created a market of his own.

Putin was born and lived in the city previously named Leningrad for some 40 years, excluding his time as a KGB officer in East Germany, before moving to Moscow in the mid-1990s.

Rusanov launched his Putin tour several years ago. Since then he has seen more foreigners turn up, he says, while colleagues are planning Putin tours of their own.

“It is popular, especially with foreign tourists,” he says.

His tour promises to show a courtyard where the president “chased rats” as a boy and another where he had his “first date” with his now ex-wife Lyudmila.