The British media paid attention to Vladimir Putin‘s walk.
The British media paid attention to Vladimir Putin‘s walk.
The Guardian reported:
A team of European neurologists says in a new study that Russian president Vladimir Putin walks with a peculiar “gunslinger’s gait”.
The study, published on Tuesday by the British Medical Journal, notes that Putin has shown a “clearly reduced right-sided arm swing”, possibly related to weapons training he received when he was part of the Soviet KGB.
Citing a KGB training manual they obtained, the researchers suggest that his style of walking is linked to training he underwent in the feared security agency, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring at the twilight of the Soviet Union.
RFE/RL remarked:
The authors - researchers based in Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands - say that Putin has displayed no other tell-tale signs of the disease.
In fact, they write, he shows "excellent motor skills" as evidenced by video footage of him enjoying athletic activities like judo and swimming - a key component of his public image that has long been fodder for fawning Russian state media coverage - and signing official documents.
"According to this manual, KGB operatives were instructed to keep their weapon in their right hand close to their chest and to move forward with one side, usually the left, presumably allowing subjects to draw the gun as quickly as possible when confronted with a foe," they write.
NBC News added:
Just as Kremlin watchers would pore over photographs during the Cold War days of the Soviet Union to see who was in and out of power, the group looked for other evidence in videos.
They saw the same strange gait in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, two former defense ministers and a military commander named Anatoly Sidorov.
"We propose that this new gait pattern, which we term 'gunslinger's gait,' may result from a behavioral adaptation, possibly triggered by KGB or other forms of weapons training where trainees are taught to keep their right hand close to the chest while walking, allowing them to quickly draw a gun when faced with a foe," they concluded.
