[citation needed] His mother, Anastasia Kuzminichna, was a Belarusian typist with the English paper factory in Pereslavl-Zalessky, and then, after the Russian Civil War, in the secretariat of the then NKVD of Byelorussia.

[4][5][6] Her father, Kuzma Pankevich, fought as a partisan during the Great Patriotic War falling ill and dying at over 90 years old in 1943 near his home next to the Lepel Cemetery where he had been a guard since the Revolution.

[5] His father, Ivan Dmitrievich, was a professional Czarist army artillery officer that fought on the Southwestern Front receiving the Cross of St. George for bravery after receiving an Austrian bayonet to the chest during the Great War and, after the Russian Revolution, became a Bolshevist with the Red Guards militia as the artillery commander of Chapayev's famed division during the Russian Civil War.

[4] Between the establishment of the Soviet Union and the Great Patriotic War, they lived in various places in Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Russia including Minsk and Kharkiv.

[6] The classic 1968 Soviet film, The Shield and the Sword depicting the prisoner exchange, inspired Russian President Vladimir Putin to join the KGB.

[12] After his resignation from the KGB, he worked for his company, Namakon (Namacon in the West), to provide security and logistics to foreign businessmen, political analysis, and finding office space and performing background checks for Western businesses in Russia.

[6] He was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and owned an icon of Tsar Nicholas II, acquired at some point following the Fall of Communism.