Russian President Vladimir Putin (73) during a recent visit to the Olympic Reserve School in St. Petersburg, he again attracted attention controversial gesture when he kissed a 10-year-old gymnast on the forehead in front of the cameras. While the Kremlin media immediately began to spread this moment as a manifestation of “fatherly care” and an effort to portray the human face of the leader, independent experts see it differently, the website writes.
According to sociologists and political scientists, this is not tenderness, but rather an act of desperation in order to stop the steep fall in credibility among the Russian population. However, this is far from the first case. The Russian dictator has a history of similar public appearances; according to the findings of independent media, he kissed at least 29 foreign children during his reign.
Among the most famous incidents is kissing a five-year-old boy on the belly in 2006 or kissing children in Dagestan in June 2023. The second mentioned case took place immediately after the Wagner uprising and was supposed to demonstrate Putin’s “unity with the nation” after the power shake-up.
Psychologists attribute this behavior to the specifics of an authoritarian personality who needs to demonstrate absolute control and superiority. Analysts also note a clear structure.
Putin uses children as a “human shield” for his PR especially when he feels his power is threatened. According to them, such gestures also indicate that the traditional methods of Kremlin propaganda are no longer effective on the public, and the regime must resort to increasingly theatrical steps.
Harsh criticism from the past
According to the conclusions of a British investigation in 2016 one of the motives for the murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko († 44) could have been his public accusation that Russian President Putin is a pedophile. Judge Sir Robert Owen’s report pointed to Litvinenko’s personal attacks against the head of the Kremlin, which culminated just four months before his poisoning in 2006, the portal reports.
At the time, the former agent published an article in which the former FSB agent claimed that there were “blank spots” in Putin’s career that could be explained by the possible knowledge of his superiors “that he is a pedophile.” Litvinenko also claimed that the Russian president himself found “videos in the Internal Security Directorate of the FSB in which he is supposed to have sex with several underage boys” and then hid them.
He also pointed to a well-known incident from a Moscow square, in which the president kissed a foreign boy’s stomach. “Putin knelt down, lifted his shirt and kissed his stomach. No one understands why the Russian president would do such a strange thing as kiss the stomach of an unknown little boy.” wrote.
The investigation concluded that the murder with radioactive polonium 210, which was carried out in a London hotel by Andrey Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, could “highly likely” be run by the Russian secret service with Putin’s approval.
Russian officials have long denied any involvement in Litvinenko’s death and insist on the version that the former agent illegally traded polonium and poisoned himself. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately rejected this British report, calling it “politically motivated” and extremely non-transparent, and warned that these conclusions would overshadow and damage mutual British-Russian relations.
