A day after the Kremlin assured Russians that Vladimir Putin was healthy despite multiple hospital examinations, he was seen repeatedly scratching his face on a trip outside Moscow.
He had entered a crowd waiting in Ufa city in a bid to prove his ‘robust’ health, which saw his nervous bodyguard holding him apart from Russians seeking to get close to the 72-year-old.
But footage of Putin meeting sports officials in Ufa showed him rubbing and scratching his face and the back of his neck.
Putin – who has allegedly undergone treatments to mask his ageing – had been seen dealing with similar itches a day earlier in Moscow.
The ‘meet the people’ moment came after the Kremlin had insisted there was nothing untoward with Putin’s health after the dictator disclosed he was having ‘regular examinations’ in a top Moscow hospital.
Russian state media later announced that he had ‘no health problems’ and his spokesman said the hospital sessions were ‘routine’.
Major security measures suggesting paranoia over his safety were put in place ahead of the Kremlin leader’s visit.
Children in the city were ordered not to go to school for two days, and instead to undergo pandemic-style online classes from home, with schools citing a risk of ‘viral infections’ as a reason.
Yet others said it was because Putin was present for the ‘Russia — a Sports Power’ forum, during which he was seen meeting Paralympians, complaining they were banned from international contests because sport had been ‘politicised’ by the West.
Putin was met with well wishers in the city, with one woman saying: ‘From the teachers, thank you.’
While in Ufa, Putin complained that children from poor families were being excluded from sport in Russia because parents were expected to pay – unlike in the Soviet era.
He demanded a return to the USSR system of free access to training for all talented children.
He said: ‘I’ll tell you honestly, if I had to pay for everything when I was actively involved in sports, I would never have become a USSR Master of Sports in Sambo [a Russian martial art], and would never have achieved the standard of a Master of Sports of the Soviet Union in Judo.
‘My family didn’t have an extra penny to pay for everything. But we need to sort this out properly. There should be no fees at all for low-income and large families.’
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