Vladimir Putin made the remarks while addressing a conference on Tuesday.
A video of Russian President Vladimir Putin sharing his most cherished childhood memory has gone viral on social media. In the clip, Mr Putin talks about his mother and how she used to punish him. The remarks were made at a public meeting with youth group ‘Movement of the First’ in Pyatigorsk on Tuesday, reported Newsweek. However, users on social media were not moved by the story, with many asking for more details.
When asked about his fondest childhood memory, Mr Putin said at the conference, “It’s a pretty personal thing, I’ll just tell you the beginning of the story. My mother put me in a corner, I don’t even remember why,” he said in the clip posted on X by Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor Anton Gerashchenko.
When asked about his kindest childhood memory, Putin shared this story (or whatever it is).
Any psychologists here? What could it mean? pic.twitter.com/84L5gLRO4U
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 5, 2023
“For some time she walked around, looking menacingly at me, asking, ‘Are you going to ask for forgiveness or not?’ I will tell you one-on-one how this story ended, I’ll just leave some parts out. Anyway, it ended with her kissing me, pulling me out of that corner, and that was the end of the story. But the way she did it, that’s a separate conversation,” Mr Putin said, with English supers appearing on the clip.
A slightly shorter version of the clip was shared by Russian outlet RT, which had almost identical English translation but did not provide any context.
Russian news agency TASS reported that Mr Putin was three or four years old when the purported incident took place.
The clip generated a lot of reactions on social media.
“A plotless, narrative-free tale of sin and redemption,” one user said in response to Mr Gerashchenko’s post. “I think he still is in that corner,” said another.
“Where’s the middle part of the story?” asked a third user.
Mr Putin was raised by his mother Maria and father Vladimir in the relatively harsh environment of Soviet St Petersburg. At the time of his birth, in 1952, the city was still suffering the aftereffects of a brutal siege by Nazi forces in World War II.