Russian President Vladimir Putin's walk has been identified as something similar to a "gunslinger's gait." This walk, which shows Putin minimally swinging his right arm compared to his left, might be due to his KGB weapons training.
The study, "'Gunslinger's gait': a new cause of unilaterally reduced arm swing," has been published in the British Medical Journal and authored by neurologists from the Netherlands, Italy and Portugal, according to Agence France-Presse.
It was when Bastiaan R. Bloem, one of the co-authors of the study and Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre's movement disorders neurology professor, received an email from a colleague with an attached video of Putin displaying his right arm stiffly swinging. He then verified this in other videos and found out that this has been consistent throughout the years.
"You could say, if it were one occasion, maybe he just had a painful shoulder or some other intermittent problem," Bloem said, according to Live Science. "But then we discovered this was a consistent finding stretching out over a period of multiple years."
The "gunslinger gait" could have been acquired from "behavioural 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," according to the British Medical Journal.
“Gunslinger’s gait”: a new cause of unilaterally reduced arm swing https://t.co/AWrswHHRzd #XmasBMJ
— The BMJ (@bmj_latest) December 15, 2015
Aside from Putin, the team of neurologists also analyzed the YouTube videos of other Russian officials in high-ranking positions such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, former defense ministers, Anatoly Serdyukov and Sergei Ivanov, and a senior military commander, Anatoly Sidorov. Their analysis revealed that the minimized movement of their right arms is not affected by neurological problems.
