Kremlin released video of the Russian president, looking relaxed, driving an SUV on the streets of Moscow and meeting his primary school teacher
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s parents were “very hospitable and generous people”, said Vera Gurevich, 92, the Russian leader’s first teacher, in Leningrad, in 1960. “His father (Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin) raised him well. He was very demanding, strict and never wanted to see him behind, but always ahead”, Gurevich told a Russian television channel, after meeting his former student.
The Kremlin released a video of Vladimir Putin driving an Aurus Komendant SUV through the streets of Moscow this Monday, which you can see linked to this article. Dressed casually in jeans and a plaid shirt and carrying a large bouquet of flowers, Putin approaches the teacher, who doesn’t immediately recognize him: “Is that you?” she asks. “Yes, it’s me,” responds the president, as she kisses him repeatedly on the cheeks and whispers something in his ear. Afterwards, Putin helps the teacher into the car to go to dinner at the Kremlin.
Putin has repeatedly referred to Vera Gurevich as a formative influence in his life. The press secretary of the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, reported that the head of state invited his first teacher to attend the Victory Day parade in Moscow and then stay for a few days in the city enjoying a cultural program.
This marketing operation comes after Western media outlets cited a European intelligence report saying that the Russian president spent weeks hiding in bunkers, he explains. The reports, which appeared in the run-up to Putin’s annual appearance in Red Square on May 9, and whose origins the Kremlin questioned, suggested that security around him had been drastically tightened and that the president had spent weeks on end directing the war in Ukraine from underground bunkers out of fear of an assassination attempt or a coup.
Russian authorities considered such scenarios absurd and Putin’s video, released on Monday night, appears to be a visual refutation of these accusations and the claims – which have long been leveled at him by some of his critics – that he is increasingly distant from his own people.
The video shows a relaxed-looking Putin arriving at a hotel in central Moscow at the wheel of a Russian-made SUV, with just one security guard, to meet the former teacher. At the hotel, Putin also talks about how he entered the hotel lobby with his family and said he was visiting the capital from Sochi, a tourist city on the Black Sea.
“Was it hot there?” asked the Russian president. “It was cold when we left and it was cold when we got here too,” the man replied, laughing. The two shook hands and Putin returned to his vehicle.
The problem is that this “spontaneous meeting with an ordinary citizen” was, after all, staged, reports .
Journalists identified the man as Alexander Bazarny, a former employee of a company that managed luxury residences in Sochi owned by both Putin and the mother of his longtime partner, Alina Kabaeva. The company also has ties to Russian intelligence, according to Agentstvo, an independent investigative news agency.
