© EPA/Jochen LuebkeRussian President Vladimir Putin (left) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are confronted by a topless demonstrator during a tour of the Hanover Fair, Hanover
Mr Putin was with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at at a trade fair in Hanover when the woman tried to push her way through to an amused-looking Mr Putin, but was blocked by aides. Her back was painted with an obscene slogan in Cyrillic script directed against the Russian president.
The activist was with two other women who also stripped to the waist and shouted slogans calling the Russian leader a "dictator".
The women appeared to be members of the feminist group Femen, which has staged topless protests against the sex industry and religious institutions.
Speaking at a press conference afterwards, Mr Putin said: "As for the protest, I liked it. In principle, we knew that such a protest was being prepared."
He said the organisers of the Hanover event should "say thank you to the Ukrainian girls, they helped you promote the trade fair."
He added: "To be honest, I didn't really hear what they were shouting because the security [guards] were very tough. These huge guys fell on the lasses. That seemed not right to me, they could have been handled more gently."
Mr Putin appeared to show a flash of his well-known salty humour, adding: "I didn't make out whether they were blondes, chestnut-haired or brunettes."
The Russian president said protests by Femen activists were nothing new. "We've all got used to these demonstrations and I don't see anything terrible here," he said.
However, he added: "If someone wants to debate political questions, then it's better to do it clothed rather than getting undressed. You should undress in other places, such as on nudist beaches."
On their Facebook page, Femen said the protest was an "anti-dictatorial attack on Putin". The group criticised the Kremlin, Russia's Federal Security Service and the Russian Orthodox Church, saying that Femen was against "dictatorship, homophobia and theocracy".
Femen protests have included burning a Salafist flag in front of the Grand Mosque in Paris, and chopping down an Orthodox cross with a chainsaw.
The group has criticized Mr Putin over the arrest and conviction of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, for performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral last year.
Russia has urged German authorities to punish the protesters. "This is ordinary hooliganism and unfortunately it happens all over the world, in any city. One needs to punish (them)," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The trade fair in Hanover, which opened on Sunday, features exhibitors from more than 60 countries. Relations between Russia and Germany have come under strain recently over the Kremlin's harsh line on opposition groups and non-governmental organisations, including raids on the offices of two German NGOs in Moscow and St Petersburg.
At the opening of the fair on Sunday, Mrs Merkel that Moscow should give "non-governmental organizations - the many groups that we in Germany know as motors of innovation - a good chance in Russia."
Mr Putin was in Hanover to open the fair, where Russia has a pavilion, and hold talks with Mrs Merkel.
Later on Monday he will travel to Holland. He is expected to be met by gay rights activists protesting over recently introduced Russian legislation which bans "homosexual propaganda" among minors. The law, in effect in several regions, has been widely criticised as homophobic.
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