Daily Times

You may not have noticed, but Russian President Vladimir Putin walks strangely.

Researchers believe they have figured out why: it’s most likely KGB weapons training at work.

Neurology professor Bastiaan Bloem of the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues had observed Putin walking with his right arm rigid while his left arm swings freely.

“We were struck to find several consecutive YouTube recordings of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, manifesting a clearly reduced right-sided arm swing,” Bloem and colleagues wrote in The BMJ, the British Medical Journal’s online publication which just happens to be running tongue-in-cheek holiday stories this week.

Bloem is an expert in movement disorders, and he and a few of his colleagues had momentarily questioned whether Parkinson’s disease, which can cause stiff movements, might be to blame.

“Searching for possible explanations, we encountered a training manual of the former Russian KGB,” they wrote.

“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.”

The group searched for additional evidence in videos, just as Kremlin watchers would pore over photographs of the Soviet Union during the Cold War to see who was in and out of power.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, two former defence ministers, and a general named Anatoly Sidorov all had the same peculiar gait.

“We propose that this new gait pattern, which we term ‘gunslinger’s gait,’ may result from a behavioral 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,” they concluded.