RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin appeared to walk awkwardly as he laid flowers at the open casket of ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, sparking fresh health concerns.
The first and last president of the USSR, Gorbachev died in Moscow at the age of 91 on Tuesday.
Today, Putin made a rare public appearance as he laid flowers in front of the Soviet leader's open coffin.
In footage played on state TV, the president can be seen laying a bouquet of red carnations at Gorbachev's coffin, next to a large black-and-white portrait of the former communist dictator.
He walks jerkily with his left arm swinging and his right 'gunslinger' arm tightly clutching the flowers.
His shoes squeak loudly as he approaches. In front of the casket, he pauses for several seconds while reporters' camera flashbulbs sound in the background.
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He looks into the casket, then at the portrait, and then back to the casket.
The Kremlin chief, 69, bows several times while making the sign of the cross.
His strange appearance sparked a number of comments on social media, with one person joking: "The guy in the box looks healthier than the standing stiff."
Others pointed out that the video appeared to have been filmed in a bunker, with no one close to the Russian president.
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"Bit worried about being in a crowded room then," one person wrote.
Putin has been increasingly isolated in recent years since the start of the Covid pandemic, with many commentators remarking on how his closed-off Kremlin is to blame for his insane decision to invade Ukraine.
His office announced today that the Russian president will not attend Gorbachev's funeral, citing that he is "too busy".
It follows reports Putin is set to deny Gorbachev a state funeral, in what many see as a snub to the elder statesman.
In comparison, when Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin died in 2007, Putin granted him a nationally televised funeral and declared a day of national mourning.
This should come as little surprise given Putin's coldness towards Gorbachev, whom he blamed for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the loss of Russia's former territories.
Putin even claimed in a 2005 speech that the collapse of the USSR was the "major geopolitical disaster of the century".
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Vlad's spokesman Dmitry Peskov today announced that the service would have some "state elements" such as a guard of honour, but seemed to again rule out a state funeral.
He added that Putin would be flying to Kaliningrad, a Russian territory bordering Poland and Lithuania, later on Thursday.
For his part, Gorbachev had slammed the actions of Putin in his later years, reportedly telling a friend in recent months that his life's work had been undone by Russia's leader.
Prominent Kremlin critic and journalist Alexei Venidiktov told Forbes Russia that all of Gorbachev's reforms have been turned "to zero, to ashes, to smoke," by the recent war in Ukraine.
Veneditkov, whose radio station was shut down by Russian authorities in March, shared a picture of himself with Gorbachev on Twitter with the caption: "We've all been orphaned. Just not everyone has realised it."
Tributes poured in for peacemaker Gorbachev following the news of his death at a Moscow hospital earlier this week.
But Putin's office shared only the briefest of messages, simply expressing "deepest condolences" at the news of his death.
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Hailed in the West for his role in ending the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, as well as opening up his country, he was hated by many Russians for bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ensuing economic chaos of the 1990s.
Some Ukrainians have also hit out at his canonisation by the West, bringing up his support for Putin's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
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