In a surreal appearance among carefully selected students, Vladimir Putin surprised them with a strange joke about a “rubber butt”, which left even Russian journalists speechless.
Foreign journalists noticed the unusual swinging of the leg and the strange pose in the chair that could indicate Parkinson’s disease.
Seated in a chair and barely able to speak, the 69-year-old appeared in a rare public appearance in front of selected high-achieving students. While addressing children aged nine to 12, he was seen shaking his leg uncontrollably throughout.
As part of an uneven speech, Putin spoke about his view of history and repeated the sentence that Russia and Ukraine should be one country. At one point, when a guy in a red uniform asked him a question, Putin gave a really confusing answer.
“You have to be motivated to achieve your goal. And, of course, hard work. All this together is very important. Hard work is a talent in itself. It’s not just, sorry, a rubber butt. “Talent is making yourself work and being able to do it productively,” he said.
He seems to have had a lot of fun with the catchphrase, as he appeared in the video laughing to himself as he said it. But the audience was left speechless as Putin’s comments drew an equally confused response from many Russians.
Others pointed out his strange tremors, with one commenter tweeting “What is he doing with his legs?”.
One person claimed to have symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Otherwise, the world media have often reported on the difficult health condition of the Russian president, where in some cases he has been replaced by a similar person in various meetings.