A team of British doctors has purported to diagnose Russia's leader with 'gunslinger's gait' - naturally, since he's a gangster right?
vladmir putin artek
If you watch Russia's president Vladimir Putin very much, you've probably noticed he has a very distinctive way of moving.

Putin typically walks with a brisk, steady stride, while swinging his left arm - but keeping his right arm relatively still close to his jacket.

As if there isn't enough speculation and misinformation out there about Russia and Vladimir Putin, a team of British doctors decided (or were incentivized) to investigate Putin's "abnormality" in 2015 - probably hoping to justify some diagnosis of mental illness.

Instead, what they came up with was a totally invented, fictitious condition they called "gunslinger's gait" - also accusing several other top Russian officials of manifesting the symptom. They published their "results" in the prestigious British Medical Journal. You can read the original report here.


Consider for a moment the preposterous absurdity of what now apparently passes for science in the United Kingdom. A country with a long tradition of scientific inquiry, and a rich history of achievement in the sciences and physics, now promotes speculative gossip of a team of so-called medical professionals, who purport to "diagnose" a subject they have never examined, and with a "disease" which does not exist.

How low the mighty have fallen.

But could Putin's "gunslinger's gait" be real?

Putin was assigned to the KGB's "first chief directorate" - the branch responsible for foreign intelligence - from 1975 to 1990. It's not known exactly what he did, but he is believed to have spent the first ten years monitoring foreigners in the USSR, while the height of his career came starting in 1985, when he spent five years posted to Dresden, East Germany. It was there he polished off his German language skills.

It is highly unlikely Putin carried a gun while in the KGB - most intel officers do not. It is not necessary for their work. Instead, they rely on "tradecraft" to carry out their tasks - mainly recruiting and monitoring foreign spies - without being detected. If they are detected while abroad, shooting their way out of the situation a la James Bond or Jason Bourne is highly unlikely to succeed, and being caught with a firearm would only incriminate them more and make things worse.

Probably, Putin received only cursory training with firearms. In fact, in one of the only videos we have of him shooting a pistol, he displays poor gun handling skills - shooting one handed, with finger on the trigger when it shouldn't be. (The finger should only be on the trigger when the gun is pointed downrange and ready to fire.) He doesn't seem to know how to wear his ear protection properly either:


The conclusions of this doctors' report just typifies the type of idiocy driving Russophobic hysteria in the West.

British doctors diagnose a patient they have never met before, with a non-existent illness using a KGB "manual" in English which is probably fake. They must be colleagues of the American psychiatrists who have diagnosed Trump with mental illness without ever having met him.

But while Putin's gunslinger's gait diagnosis may be bogus, we are forced to admit it is incredibly badass.

If the aim of this "diagnosis" was to get more people to fear Putin and Russia, it is certain to have had the opposite effect.

So sit back and enjoy this compilation of Vladimir Putin showing off his "gunslinger's gait" to the world and let western Russophobic liberals tear their hair out: