I've never said this anywhere before: I met Vladimir Putin when I was preparing for your university entrance exams.

Axar.az reports that this was stated by renowned businessman Ilham Rahimov in a special edition of the show "Truth in the Dark," broadcast on YouTube.

He mentioned that he met Putin in the university corridors during their preparation period:

"We were in the exam phase, and we didn't know who would be accepted to the university. When the exam results were announced, I asked Khmarin to go check the results in the journal. After looking at the journal, he came back and gave a thumbs-up. It turned out that I, Vladimir Putin, and Viktor Khmarin were classmates. All three of us had similar interests. We loved sports, didn’t smoke, and didn’t enjoy drinking. These three aspects brought us closer. I practiced wrestling, while they did judo, and Putin even became the champion of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)."