Friday, July 07, 2006
Putin: "I just wanted to stroke him like a kitten"
In what has to be the weirdest leader-of-a-great-power moment since George H.W. Bush puked at a state dinner in Japan, Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly kissed a young boy on the stomach. The explanation is even stranger -- at least to my Yankee ears -- than the act itself:
The normally dour former KGB officer insisted that it was a spontaneous decision to approach the five-year-old, who was in a group of tourists, to lift his shirt and kiss his stomach.
"People came up and I began talking to them, among them this little boy. He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and at the same time defenceless, so to speak, an innocent boy and a very nice little boy," Mr Putin said.
"I tell you honestly, I just wanted to stroke him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. There is nothing behind it."
Russians occasionally kiss babies on the stomach, but almost never five-year-old boys.
Ohh-kaaay.
So, precisely what did George Bush see when he looked into Putin's eyes?
All kidding aside, my gut tells me that this was a genuine, if awkward, spontaneous bit of non-erotic affection, a powerful world leader forgetting about the cameras a bit too completely. The other possible explanations -- that it was a PR stunt to soften Putin's image, or that Vladimir Putin is a closet pederast -- strike me as unlikely and wildly improbable, respectively.
4 Comments:
By 
Deuce ☂, at
Fri Jul 07, 08:29:00 PM:
Putin is a strange miserable leader of a strange miserable land. My fondest moments of Russia are of the take-off flight when I left. It is no coincidence that the population growth is negative. This incident is bewildering but not as much as his hosting a G8 summit.
By 
, at
Fri Jul 07, 09:46:00 PM:
Hmm Can you say bellyflop? Yes I knew you could!
By , at
Sat Jul 08, 12:00:00 AM:
The technical term is "pedophile."
By Nilk, at
Tue Jul 11, 01:45:00 AM:
I don't know how to put it eloquently, but I'll give it a go.
I see it as a spontaneous gesture and nothing really threatening. It was no doubt a dumb move in the public relations sphere, but that's about it.
Why do I think this?
Because children and babies can evoke this reaction in adults. I've seen it with my own child. When she was a baby, I had the head nurse in the ward telling me she wanted to eat her. She was so delicious to look at and such a lovely baby. They wanted to bite her.
Since then, another lady who has become quite close to us also had the same reaction to my daughter. She would pick up Magilla and nuzzle into her stomach. For the lady, of an Egyptian background, it was a normal thing to do. She also said she wanted to eat the little one, or bite her because she was so beautiful. (My baby was 18 months old at the time. She's now 4 and our friend still loves to do this!)
Maybe it's something to do with how we relate to food, I don't know. It also seems to be a european sort of behaviour.
I have seen it a few too many times to be surprised by it, though.
Oh, and there was no hint of anything sexual or erotic at any time. They just seemed to fall in love with my child and it was one way of showing it.
