Veniamin Trubachev is a correspondent for Current Time TV.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, one of its most famous symbols became a piece of graffiti known as The Fraternal Kiss. Completed in June 1990, this mural depicts Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev kissing East German leader Erich Honecker on the lips; a greeting then common among Soviet bloc leaders. For the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's demolition, Current Time spoke to the graffiti’s creator, Russian artist Dmitry Vrubel.
Thirty years ago this November, a young KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, witnessed firsthand the mass demonstrations that helped end East Germany's authoritarian system of government. To find out how 1989, central and eastern Europe's year of revolutions, impacted the future Russian president's perceptions of protests and power, Current Time traveled to Dresden, the eastern German city where Putin worked from 1985 until 1990.
