Ex-KGB spy reveals what it was like to be interrogated by Vladimir Putin

Picture this, it's the 1980s and you've been detained in the Soviet Union over dubious allegations of being a foreign agent.

You're sat waiting in an austere police station somewhere in Moscow or St Petersburg when none other than a young Vladimir Putin sits down to grill you over said spying claims.

This may sound like a scrapped subplot lifted straight out of a low budget, direct-to-DVD espionage film, but for one former KGB man this was the exact experience he had growing up in the Soviet Union.

And it turns out that the current Russian president was just as power obsessed then as he is now.

Recalling his unfortunate experience of crossing paths with Putin back in the 1980s during an interview with The Sun, Sergei Jirnov had worked for Soviet intelligence before being exiled to France in 2001.

Former KGB agent Sergei Jirnov had an uncomfortable run-in with Vladimir Putin back in 1980 (L'invité)

Jirnov had joined the KGB back in 1984 and trained at the same intelligence school as Putin. However, his run-in with the ruthless leader would happen four years prior, and it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience.

The 64-year-old had been volunteering at the 1980 Moscow Olympics when he made the fatal error of supplying a French national with information about the event.

This rather boring telephone conversation was enough to trigger suspicion in the mind of a permanently paranoid KGB officer and led to Jirnov receiving a grilling from Putin, who believed him to be a French spy.

Describing the now-president as a 'jealous' man who 'adored' power, Jirnov believed that Putin took a 'strange pleasure' from interrogating detainees.

"When he interrogated me, I felt a strange pleasure of him. He had a sadistic pleasure when interrogating people," he told the outlet.

At one point Putin believed he'd backed the 19-year-old into a corner after he referenced a book which had been banned at the time, however he was forced to drop the line of inquiry when Jirnov revealed he'd been gifted it by relatives of then USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev.

An image of a young Vladimir Putin shown on his Stasi ID card during his 1984-1990 tenure in East Germany (BSTU)

Out of avenues in which he could further interrogate Jirnov, Putin was forced to let him go — something which the exile believes the 72-year-old likely wasn't too happy about.

"I also felt a jealousy from him regarding the persons who are better than him. And this jealousy increased over the years," he added.

Jirnov would later cross paths with Putin a final time during the dying days of the Soviet Union a decade later while he was on a mission — however Putin did not speak to him.

He would later fall foul of the Russian regime in 2001 and forced to flee to France where he has lived as an exile ever since.