Russian President Vladimir Putin walks with a curious “gunslinger’s gait” — a reduced swing in his right arm which he may have acquired through KGB weapons training, an unusual study published Monday
Russian President Vladimir Putin walks with a curious “gunslinger’s gait” — a reduced swing in his right arm which he may have acquired through KGB weapons training, an unusual study published Monday said.
The research, published in the British medical journal The BMJ, was written by a team of neurologists in Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands. Specialists in analysing postures and movements that are potential signs of health disorders, they say they were struck by Mr Putin’s “distinct” way of walking. Video footage shows that when Mr Putin walks, his left arm swings normally but his right arm barely moves.
Asymmetrical movement like this is often a telltale sign of Parkinson’s disease. But the doctors found no other symptoms of this disease in Mr Putin, such as tremor, rigidity or poor coordination. Quite the opposite, in fact: they found he had “excellent motor skills,” as a judo black belt, weight lifter and swimmer, and his handwriting is fast and signature tremble-free.
But their investigations turned up an intriguing alternative explanation in the form of a training manual used by the former Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. The manual, which they had translated into Dutch, instructs operatives to keep their weapon in their right hand close to their chest and move forward with one side — usually the left — “turned somewhat in the direction of movement.”
Wondering whether prolonged and intensive training in this method could explain Mr Putin’s gait, as he was a KGB operative in the Cold War, the team carried out a trawl on YouTube for videos of other Russian officials. The researchers were “stunned” by what they saw, said Bastiaan Bloem, professor of mov-ement disorder neurology at Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. They also found the characteristic walk in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in two former defence ministers — Anatoly Serdyukov and Sergei Ivanov — and in Anatoly Sidorov, a senior military commander. Mr Putin and Mr Ivanov are both former KGB officials.
