Shocking reason behind why Vladimir Putin walks with one arm by his side
You may have noticed that Russian president Vladimir Putin's walk is a little unique.
When the 72-year-old isn't busy rejecting peace deals for the war in Ukraine or having a good old catch up on the phone with his 'friend' Donald Trump, Putin can often be seen walking around his home country.
While his left arm swings free without a care in the world, his right arm appears to remain pretty rigid, which you may think is just an error in his programming but the alleged reason is perhaps something far more sinister.
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It is perhaps no surprise that the former intelligence officer, who recently mocked Britain while talking about our country's economy, walks in this way as it's apparently for his own good.
Although a man as universally popular as Putin would surely never ever fear the risk of assassination, it seems as if his unusual walk may well stem from him carrying a weapon on his right-hand side, something experts believe comes straight from the KGB manual.
Neurology professor Bastiaan Bloem, of the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and his colleagues have certainly picked up on his walk, and after some research into the matter, they published their findings in the online version of the British Medical Journal back in 2015.
They wrote: "We were struck to find several consecutive YouTube recordings of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, manifesting a clearly reduced right-sided arm swing.
"Searching for possible explanations, we encountered a training manual of the former Russian KGB.
"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 concluded: "We propose that this new gait pattern, which we term ‘gunslinger’s gait,’ may result from a behavioural 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."
The researchers were also 'stunned' after finding the same characteristic walk in former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, senior official Sergei Ivanov, and former general Anatoly Sidorov.
So, there seems to be a correlation between the military training and the walk, with Putin clearly opting for the overly-cautious knee and elbow-pad cyclist approach in that he might look silly, but at least he's safe.
Topics: Politics, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Weird
James Moorhouse