why don’t you move it when you walk?

Whatever he does president of russia, Vladimir Putin, is carefully observed. More now, with the war in ukraine. Extremely jealous of his privacy, little is known about his time as a spy for the KGB, the secret service of the former Soviet Union, and even less about his private life. But when he walks, there is something that does not go unnoticed: when he walks, Putin does not move his right arm, which is always almost stiff. He only propels himself with the left one. The president’s gestures and way of expressing himself cause so much interest that they have even given rise to scientific investigations. Why doesn’t he move his right arm?

the medical journal British Medical Journal (BMJ) published in 2015 an article with the conclusions of a study carried out by four neurologists. The objective of the investigation was to know if the stiffness of the president’s right arm was due to a stroke or to the Parkinson’s diseasesince it is a paralysis that frequently occurs in these pathologies.

Study of gait patterns

The experts analyzed different YouTube videos showing the gait of the russian officials high ranking. In this way, they found a “similar gait pattern“in Putin, in Dmitry Medvedevwho was prime minister of Russia, in Anatoly Serdyukov, Sergei Ivanov and Anatoly Sidorov.

All these politicians presented a “reduced right arm swing when walking“, the researchers indicated. However, they ruled out that they suffered from the diseases of the object of the study because they showed an “absence of any other manifest neurological abnormality”.

“Gunslinger March”

Discarded the health problems, the experts searched for another answer to why Putin does not move his right arm when he walks. All the people analyzed shared something in common: they had military training. Thus, they concluded that it was a “behavioral adaptation“. Specifically, the Putin’s way of walking it’s a learned gesture in his stage as KGB spy. There they taught to propel themselves with the left arm and to have the right arm close to the chest, available to draw the pistol quickly.

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The researchers dubbed Putin’s popular gait pattern “gunslinger march” at study published in the BMJ magazine.